Page 67 of Ruthless Knot

Not just trembling—shaking, full-body tremors that have nothing to do with the cold rain and everything to do with the trauma crashing through her system.

She's been broken before.

I can see it in the way she holds herself. The practiced posture of someone who's learned to survive by becoming invisible. The defensive curl of someone who expects every moment of vulnerability to be punished.

Just like me.

Just like the boy I was before my mother died. Before I built walls so high not even light could penetrate.

We're the same.

Both broken.

Both surviving.

Both so fucking lonely that we reached across the void throughletters, through anonymous words, through the desperate hope that somewhere out there, someone would choose to know us.

And now she's standing in front of me.

Real.

Solid.

Mine.

The possessiveness of that thought should alarm me. I've known her for hours. Shouldn't be thinking of her in those terms. Shouldn't be feeling this overwhelming surge ofshe belongs to me and I will destroy anyone who touches her.

But I am.

God help me, I am.

"Look at me, S.E."

The words come out low. Deliberate. The voice I use when I want someone tolisten.

She stiffens.

For a moment, I'm not sure she'll comply. She's still standing with her back mostly toward me, head bowed, every line of her body screaming resistance. Screamingdon't look at me like this, don't see me when I'm broken, don't?—

Then the letters register.

S.E.

Her signature on every letter she's ever sent me.

The initials I've traced with my fingertips a thousand times, wondering who she was, what she looked like, whether she was beautiful or plain or something in between.

I see the moment recognition starts to dawn.

The subtle shift in her posture. The way her breathing changes—catches, stutters, restarts. The tension that was purely defensive becoming something else. Somethingwondering.

Slowly—so slowly it feels like watching a sunrise—she lifts her head.

And looks at me.

Her face is a watercolor of devastation.

Makeup running in dark rivers down her cheeks. Tears indistinguishable from rain. Mismatched eyes—one blue, one green—red-rimmed and swollen but somehow stillfierce. Still burning with that spark of stubborn vitality that refuses to be extinguished, no matter how hard the world tries.