I feel better.
Not good, let’s not get crazy, but better. The crushing weight on my chest has lifted slightly. The apartment doesn’t feel like a coffin anymore. It feels like... a place someone could maybe live.
Saul did that. Saul with his blankets and his flour and his fry-stealing and his quiet certainty that I’m going to be okay.
He’s making this work. He’s making Beth Taylor survivable.
I sink onto the couch. Pull the teal blanket into my lap. Feel the soft fabric under my fingers.
This is what surviving looks like. Apparently. One man showing up. Remembering your coffee preference. Refusing to let you starve to death in your anxiety cave. Dropping fries on the table like a breadcrumb trail out of the wreckage.
It’s terrifying. Discovering your depression has been slowly replaced with a Target starter pack of emotional stability and you didn’t notice until the third receipt.
I could be Beth.
The kind of woman who meal preps. Who owns seasonal candles. Who refers to her U.S. Marshal handler as a friend and doesn’t mean it sexually.
Okay, that may never be true. The man speaks directly to my clit. But the rest is.
The thought should feel like relief.
It doesn’t.
It feels like drowning.
Because if Beth becomes survivable, if this life starts to work, then Stevie is gone. Not dormant. Not in hibernation. Gone. Deleted from the hard drive, wiped from the registry, replaced with a clean install of beige stability.
New name. New job. No cookies for murderers. No chaos. No teeth. Just Beth.
And the thought of that sends me launching off the couch like I’ve just been possessed by my own ghost.
I grab the pen. Black. Heavy. Familiar.
The D.M. stamped on the side throbs in my hand like a heartbeat I forgot I had. Dario’s initials. Dario’s pen. Dario’s orbit.
Dario, who saw me when I was still teeth and glitter and courtroom orgasms. Who tasted my grief in cookie form and smiled like he’d been waiting for it. Dario, who looked at me like I was art, not a witness.
Saul sees Beth. He sees someone worth saving. Someone to nurture. To protect. To feed.
But Dario saw Stevie.
Obsessive. Feral. Unwell.
Me.
And he stayed.
Saul’s giving me a life.
Dario reminds me I had one.
And the horrifying thing is... I need both.
I need Saul’s groceries and curtain rods and steady fucking hands. I need him to keep me fed and dressed and mostly alive.
But I need Dario’s chaos. I need to stalk his house at midnight and leave cookies like a heat-seeking missile of identity preservation.
Because if I stop, if I commit fully to this life with the teal blanket and the correct password to the billing software and the Whole Foods coffee, then Stevie disappears.
