Page 78 of Fractured Devotion
I walk out before she can reconsider, and later, I wait for her outside the clinic.
Around eight, I head toward her office and knock lightly on the frame. She’s still there, hunched over her desk, her brows furrowed at the screen. She looks up at me, blinking like she’d forgotten anyone else existed.
“Give me five minutes,” she says, standing. “I need to change.”
I nod. “Take your time.”
I linger in the empty hallway, the faint buzz of fluorescents holding the space together.
She disappears down the hall toward the elevator. I know where she’s going. She’s going to her backup apartment three floors above the clinic. Few know about it, and fewer still would understand why she needs a space like that so close. But I do. It’s hers. A safehouse tucked inside concrete and silence, a place where she keeps another version of herself—less guarded, more raw.
I imagine her moving through that space, pulling off her sterile uniform and letting the day slide from her skin. She’ll choose something soft, something that doesn’t remind her of the lab, of the cold clinical distance she wraps around herself like aritual. And for a moment, I let myself picture her barefoot, hair loose, and shedding everything but herself.
Exactly seven minutes later, the elevator chimes.
She walks out wearing a soft knit sweater in charcoal gray and faded jeans that hug her hips in all the right ways. Her hair is down, a little tousled. It’s not the steel-plated poise I’m used to, and it does something to me. It softens the hard edges of my thoughts.
My throat tightens at the sight of her like that, unguarded and uncertain.
I’m already rising from the bench, where I’d been waiting. Her eyes flick to me as she approaches, her expression unreadable.
I stand straighter, meeting her halfway. “Hey,” I say, my voice steady as I nod toward the car waiting just outside. “You ready?”
She glances up, then at me. “Am I going to regret this?”
I smile. “Probably. But not tonight.”
We drive in silence at first. I take us through the old part of town and down winding streets that eventually spill into the edge of the wooded ridge. The road opens into an overlook—isolated, forgotten by time, and untouched by the clinic’s reach, as if it belonged to a different world entirely.
We pull to a stop at the edge of the overlook, the tires crunching over gravel as I ease the car into park. The engine ticks as it cools. I glance at her, waiting to see if she hesitates.
She doesn’t.
She opens her door and steps out, her boots landing softly on the dirt path. The breeze pulls at the ends of her hair, catching the scent of something faint and clean—maybe the shampoo she used upstairs. She doesn’t say anything as she walks to the edge of the cliff. She just rests her arms along the rusted guardrail and stares out at the falling dusk.
Her body is loose but not relaxed. She’s holding something in, bracing for a conversation we both know is coming. I let her have the stillness for a few seconds longer before joining her.
“You brought me to a cliff?” she says.
“There’s a view,” I offer.
She snorts. “How romantic.”
I move beside her. “Not everything has to be dramatic. Sometimes, silence does the work better.”
We stand like that for a long while.
Then, she asks, “What are you doing, Kade?”
I turn toward her. “Trying not to lie to you.”
She looks at me then, really looks. “You said someone wants me rattled. Still think that?”
“Yes. And I see that it’s working.”
She exhales slowly, the sound threaded with resignation. “I figured as much. First, the van, then someone creeping through my apartment like I’m some kind of experiment. They took a picture of me when I was sleeping. And now this constant itch in my skin, like I’m being watched even when I’m alone. It’s not surprising anymore. It’s just… bone-deep exhausting.”
“Wait, what photo?” I ask, my voice tight. I turn to face her fully, the tension in my spine hardening. “What do you mean someone took a picture of you?”
