Page 23

He was there. Real. Not a hallucination. Not a dream. Not some figment my trauma dragged out of the dark to punish me. He stood in that room like the months between us never happened. Like he didn’t disappear without a word. Like he didn’t leave me with a thousand questions and a body I still don’t recognize when I look in the mirror.
I lay on the couch in Tayana’s office for hours. I didn’t move. I didn’t eat. I just... existed. Barely. It was dark when she finally came in, her soft footfalls echoing louder than they should have. She didn’t say anything at first. Just sat on the floor in front of me, cross-legged and waiting.
And then, gently, “You want to tell me what happened?”
My lips parted, but the words didn’t come. They were stuck. Somewhere deep. Somewhere sacred.
“I saw him,” I said finally, my voice barely above a whisper.
Her brow furrowed. “Who?”
I didn’t answer, and she didn’t push. I took a breath, but it was shaky. Shallow. Like everything inside me was resisting being spoken.
“He was at the prison,” I said. “Tall. Blonde. Green eyes. He called himself Devon when I was... there. But Mason called him Saxon. Saxon North.”
Tayana stilled. She knew the name. Of course she did. A side effect of her line of work.
“I thought I was prepared,” I whispered. “Thought I’d moved past it. Past him.”
Her voice was careful. “Did he hurt you, Maxine?”
I closed my eyes. And the answer was so complicated, it made me want to scream.
“No,” I said, and it was the truth. “Not in the way you think.”
But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Because he didn’t hurt me like the others did. He whispered that he was FBI. That he was there to save me. He touched me like I was something sacred, even while pretending to be one of them. He made me feel like I mattered in a place designed to destroy me. And then he vanished. Left me with nothing but memories I couldn’t shake and a name that never belonged to him in the first place.
Tayana waited without speaking. She knew the kind of silence that stemmed from trauma. The kind that teetered on the edge of a truth so ugly, you almost wanted to swallow it before it escaped.
“I let him touch me,” I said finally, and the shame curdled in my gut the second it was out. “I wanted him to.” Tears welled in my eyes, but I didn’t let them fall. “I knew it was a game. I knewwe were being watched. But when he looked at me, I felt... human. For the first time in months. And I hated myself for it, Tayana. I hated myself because part of me didn’t want it to be pretend.”
She just sat there, eyes soft, hands folded. Like she understood.
“I still think about him,” I said. “All the time. I hate that I do. I hate that after everything, after all the men who touched me without permission, he’s the one I remember most.”
Her voice was quiet when she spoke. “Because he made you feel like you had a choice.”
My breath caught. Yeah. That was it. Exactly that.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” I whispered.
“You don’t have to do anything with it,” she said. “You survived. That’s already more than anyone expected of you.”
I wiped at my face, hating how raw I felt.
“I thought I hated him,” I said. “But when I saw him today... it felt like the ground dropped out from under me.”
She nodded. Understanding. Patient.
My chin trembled.
“I don’t know how to let go of him.”
“Who says you have to?”
We sat in silence for a while. Not the heavy kind. Not the kind that presses on your ribs. The kind that lets you breathe again.
And when she took my hand, I finally let myself cry—not because I was broken.