Page 73 of Let Me In

She holds tighter.

Fingers curling into mine, like she doesn’t want to be brave right now. Like she doesn’t want to pretend. Like she just needs me to hold on and mean it. Her grip is light but steady, an anchor more than a reach.

Not desperate. Just real. Just her way of saying: don’t let go unless I ask you to.

So I stay.

I leave my hand in hers, palm warm and open in her lap. Letting her keep it. Letting her have it.

We drive like that for a long time.

No more words.

Just the hush of the road. The low hum of the tires. The occasional shift of her thumb brushing over my knuckles—like she’s grounding herself with me. Like she doesn’t even realize she’s touching the same knuckles that have broken men before. And yet her touch is the softest thing they’ve ever known.

And I am.

God help me, I am.

The closer we get, the quieter she gets.

Not a single word since she squeezed my hand.

She hasn’t let go.

But I feel it. The tension creeping back into her fingers, the dread tightening the air in the cab.

The road curves. Familiar trees turn to fences. Gravel shifts to asphalt. And there it is.

Her house.

If you could call it that.

Modest. Unassuming. But even from here, I can feel it pressing in on her. The weight of it. The way it shrinks her.

There’s no one visible out front. No cars pulled in behind mine. But the curtains in the front window twitch.

Someone’s watching.

Of course they are.

She still hasn’t let go of my hand.

I pull the truck to a full stop and shift into park, but I don’t move.

Neither does she.

She just stares out the windshield. Not at anything. Just… through it.

And everything in me starts to burn.

Between the shadows crawling back from my past and the ones waiting at the door of hers—there’s not a single cell in my body that wants to leave her here.

Not when I know what’s waiting.

Not after last night. After everything she let me see. Everything she gave—without saying a word.

My cabin isn’t mine anymore.

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