Page 99 of Jayson
My fingers curl around the cool plaster of the wall as the room tilts, reorienting around that single, terrible orbit. I inch closer, pulse thrumming in my ears.
“Yeah,” he snarls, “tell your shiny-shoed friend to crawl backinto his shadow. If he wants her, he’ll have to dig through me—bury me—then keep digging.”
A scrape of glass, the thunk of crystal on wood. He’s pacing now; I can imagine the hard lines of his shoulders, muscles bunching beneath tattooed skin. The same arms that held me safe less than two hours ago are coiled, ready to maim.
The world tilts.
Not like a dizzy spell or a stumble—but like the axis of my life just jerked sideways and left me dangling. Gravity goes soft. Air thins. My ears fill with static, except for him—his voice in the room, deep and low and quiet enough to feel like a betrayal.
“No, I stand my ground…”
Each word slices through the silence like a whisper.
“I know you will…”
My throat constricts. I want to move. I want to run. But my feet feel nailed to the floor, the plush rug beneath me suddenly suffocating instead of soft. I can’t stop listening. Can’t look away from the fracture forming right down the center of what I thought was safety.
“Make him forget her name…”
That one rips straight through my chest.
I clamp a hand over my mouth, like that will stop the scream that wants out. Or the sob. Maybe I’m not sure which one I’m holding in anymore.
There’s a pause. A breath. Rough. Like he’s angry. Or maybe afraid.
“It doesn’t matter. She’s not going anywhere.”
The call ends.
And the silence that follows isn’t peaceful—it’s crushing. It’s the kind of silence that feels personal. Like an accusation. Like the walls themselves know I’m standing here, too close to the fire, too far gone to save.
My stomach lurches, twisting in a way that has nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with dread. My body doesn’t belong to me anymore. It’s light. Detached. I’m floating backward without meaning to, like my soul is backing away before I do something irreversible.
The hallway stretches out in front of me like some kind of cruel metaphor. Long. Elegant. Endless. The kind of hallway built for women who belong here—not fugitives running from the past and the secrets that come with it.
He doesn’t need this. Me. He doesn’t need the mess that follows me, the ghosts, the threats. The blood. Walking away would be the smart thing. The kind thing. The right thing.
But the thought of leaving him? It cuts deep. And the cut is not quick and clean. No—it’s worse. It’s a blade that’s been soaking in ice water, pressing slow and merciless beneath my ribs. It’s pain with clarity. A truth I don’t want to swallow: I’m bringing chaos to his door. I’m the storm. And he’s already weathered enough.
I duck into the nearest guest room and shut the door behind me like it’s going to hold the feelings out. It doesn’t. They follow me in, sticky and relentless.
I sit on the edge of the bed, fists balled in the soft sheets, trying to remember how to breathe like a person not about to shatter.
I replay the conversation over and over like it’s a puzzle I can solve if I just find the right corner piece. But all I keep coming back to is the way he said those words—She’s not going anywhere.
Was that a promise?
And why—why, when I’ve survived things that should’ve killed me—does this ache worse than all of them? Why does the idea of leaving him hurt more than anything anyone’s ever doneto me? Why do his words—vague, measured, guarded—feel like claws tearing through the fragile thing I didn’t even know I’d started to build?
Something that looked a little too much like hope.
The pages blur.
I don’t know how long I’ve been staring at the words I just wrote—names, colors, phrases that loop in my head like a song I can’t turn off. Each one bites, then slips away again before I can catch it. It’s like trying to hold water with open hands.
Blue door.
Red couch.
