Page 60 of Scar Tissue

“There is no safe anymore,” I snap, the heat in my voice surprising even me. “Not after what they did. Not after what I do and don’t remember. You think shutting me out is protecting me, but it’s not. It’s just leaving me alone with it. You want to stand there and tell me to stay out of it? Like I don’t deserve to face the thing that—” my voice breaks “—that broke me? Do you have any idea what that feels like? To not even remember all of it, butknowit was bad enough that your body just decided to sign off instead?”

“I never said you didn’t deserve?—”

“That’s exactly what you’re saying! You’re deciding I’mtoo fragile to stand in the aftermath of myownpain. But what you don’t realize is that I’m so fucking sick of being fragile because it’s all I’ve been doing since Miles died! Every second you push me away,” I continue, my voice trembling now, “you’re choosing your guilt over us. And I can’t compete with that. I won’t.”

He looks like he’s been struck.

“I just don’t want to lose you,” he says as he reaches for my hand.

“You’ll only lose me if you continue down this path.”

“I don’t know how to help you,” he says, his voice hollow.

“I’m not okay,” I admit. “I’m not strong right now. I’m angry. I’m scared, and I feel…violated in a way I can’t even fully understand.” My hands shake, and I don’t bother hiding it even though I know he can feel it. “But shutting me out doesn’t fix that and I don’t need you to fix me. We’re not okay,” I say, meeting his eyes and forcing him to stay there with me. “And we’re not going to be for a while.”

He nods once, like it costs him.

“But if you shut me out again,” I add, my voice becoming even, “that might be the thing we don’t come back from.”

Chapter

Thirty-Four

THEA

For the first time in my life, I’m choosing myself, and yet it feels like the cost is more significant than any of the other momentous moments I should have done so. I didn’t choose myself when I stayed in a loveless marriage. I didn’t choose myself when my baby girl was born sleeping. Instead, I kept begging for something, anything, to fill the hollow and make it all make sense, to tell me I was still worthy of being chosen. Because if I wasn’t chosen to be a wife to a husband who loved her and if I wasn’t chosen to be a mother, what was I worthy of?

I bent until I broke, then called it resilience. I silenced my own needs and called it love. I stayed where it hurt because leaving felt like a failure until there was nothing left for me to lose. But choosing myself now? It doesn’t feel triumphant, and why should it? I’ve been assaulted, bruised, and broken in a way beyond what any human should be. Choosing to do so now, when I finally havesomeonewho wants me feels like grief. Not because I don’t have anything, but because I do. And he wants me to stand on the outside of it. He didn’t say anything after I last spoke, and I didn’t try to convince him to. My words needed no explanation even though it felt like a knifedigging into my chest as I spoke them. Now, we sit across from one another in the living room. Dylan, Fletcher, and Claire have rejoined us as we discuss the events and our next steps. Nathan wants to relocate Claire and I, and naturally Fletcher agrees, but I have a feeling that wouldn’t stop them from finding us even if we tried. They’re going to be out for blood now. More than they were.

“Let me be the bait.” Claire’s words stop everyone, and the only sound in the room is of our breathing.

“I’m sorry…what?” Nathan chokes.

Claire is quiet for a moment before she speaks again. “Let me be the bait. Let me go somewhere in public that I know he frequents.”

I’m about to protest before Fletcher puts his hand up to silence me. “Let her speak, she’s been through just as much if not more than any of us in this room. If she has a plan, she deserves to be heard out.”

“But she’s a child!” Nathan retorts.

“A child?” she repeats, tilting her head. “Is that what you think I am?”

“Claire—” I start, but she doesn’t even look at me.

“No.” Her voice hardens, something unbreakable threading through it. “You don’t get to call me that after what he made me survive.”

The room stills and Nathan’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out this time. I feel like we’ve been in this place before, but it feels like she’s about to open up even more than she has.

She stands up and takes a step forward, her shoulders squared even though her hands are shaking at her sides. “Children don’t learn how to read the sound of a lock turning and know exactly how many seconds they have to hide something. Children don’t memorize exit routes in rooms they’re not supposed to leave. They aren’t supposed to get put in front of strangers to be tested, to see if I might say the wrong thing. To see if I smiled when I was supposed to or if I looked at someone too long. Children aren’t supposed to be trained to speak or when to stay quiet or how to make more peoplecomfortable. We aren’t asked to be brought into a world that wishes to do us harm. Children don’t walk around every day knowing someone out there is hunting them because they took something he wants back.

Nathan’s jaw tightens. “Claire, you don’t have to?—”

“I do.” She cuts in, sharper now. “Because you keep acting like I don’t understand the risk.” Fletcher hasn’t moved. He’s watching her like every word matters. And Dylan is squeezing his shoulder with a mix of fear and awe in her eyes. “I had to learn how to disappear while standing right in front of someone. How to make myself smaller. Quieter. Easier to control. I learned how to listen through walls. How to tell who was coming by the way their footsteps sounded. How long I had before a door opened. Before I had to be…whatever they needed me to be. Children don’t deserve to be manipulated by being offered the one thing that should have come naturally from their parents. Because that manipulation eventually turns into isolation. And by the time I realized it, I didn’t have any other choice left but to run.”

Her voice drops again, quiet and exhausted.

“He doesn’t lose things. Not people. Not objects. Not mistakes. So when I took that USB and ran, that wasn’t just an escape. It was a challenge.”

Nathan drags a hand over his mouth, pale now. “Claire, he’s not going to just try to take you back.”