Page 1 of The Vagabond

MAXINE

T he key sticks in the lock.

Figures. First day of freedom, and the damn door won’t even let me in. I jiggle it, harder this time, until it finally gives with a loud click. The sound echoes down the empty hallway like a gunshot, sharp and final. I step inside. Alone.

No guards. No drivers. No Brando. No one watching every breath I take like I might shatter if I exhale too hard.

The apartment is small. Clean. Impersonal. Pale walls and pale light. A secondhand couch. It's small. It's plain. But it's mine. And for now, that's enough.

I drop the last of my bags by the door, heart pounding like I just ran here instead of riding in silence for thirty-two minutes with my brother-in-law Brando glowering in the driver’s seat like he was escorting me to my own execution.

He didn’t say much. His disappointment crackled between us like static, burning into my skin. But I meant what I said.

“If you don’t let me have this,” I’d whispered to him, voice trembling, “I’ll hate you forever.”

His jaw clenched. “Don’t say that. ”

“I will. I swear to God, I will. I’ll never forgive you if you take this from me.”

His silence said it all. Because Brando loves me like I’m cracked porcelain.

Like if he doesn’t protect me, I’ll slip through his fingers again, back into the kind of darkness we don’t say out loud.

And maybe he’s not wrong. But I can’t live under lock and key anymore—not even golden ones.

I need to know who I am when no one’s watching.

I toe off my shoes and pad barefoot into the center of the room. The air smells like sunlight and new beginnings. Raw and unshaped.

I’ve spent the last year in trauma therapy. I’ve screamed. Cried. Sat in silence for hours trying to remember how to breathe in a world where men like my jailer Altin Kadri exist. I’ve talked about what it was like to be owned. What it was like to be handed to someone like a toy and told to smile.

I’ve talked about him , too. The Fed. The one who broke my heart. The one who whispered I’ll get you out even as he undid his belt, even as Kadri leaned back on his throne of sin and watched.

Saxon North, aka Devon Walsh. My ghost. My shame. My lifeline. I hated him. I worshipped him. And I never forgot him.

He vanished before my heart could heal. And when I saw him again—months later, in a prison waiting room when I was visiting my uncle Mason, my knees buckled.

Not out of fear, but from betrayal. Because I’d spent nights dreaming of his face while I lay in chains, believing that he would come back for me, save me from the nightmare I was living in.

But he never came back. And still, I never forgot him.

I’ve seen him a few times now; he has a nasty habit of turning up at the most inopportune times. On my uncle’s doorstep, at the hospital after my uncle’s girlfriend was snatched and assaulted. He’s just everywhere. And yet, he’s no-where .

I shake the thought away. It’s not today’s problem. He’s a ghost from my ugly past, and the past has no place in the present.

I haul my bags into the bedroom. The mattress is basic, the curtains are cheap, and I’ve never been more proud of anything in my life.

I sit down, breathless. This is what standing on your own two feet feels like. This is what it means to start at the bottom and work your way up. It’s terrifying, but baby steps…

I close my eyes for a second. Just a second. Let the silence wrap around me. My heart finally starts to slow. But then—my brows pinch. Something’s wrong. Not wrong wrong. But… off.

The air feels disturbed. Like it was just stirred up and hasn’t settled yet. Like someone exhaled right before I opened the door. I stand still, listening. The empty room stares back at me with innocent silence. But the hairs on the back of my neck won’t lie flat.

I walk back through the living room, slow and deliberate. Glance over the bookshelf. The kitchen. The narrow hallway that leads to my bedroom.

Nothing’s out of place. And yet…

I press my palm to the wall, fingertips splayed. Just grounding myself. Just breathing.

There’s a whisper in my bones, low and certain: You’re not alone. I shake it off. Because I am. I have to be. I locked the door. The building's secure. Brando double-checked everything before I moved in—before I made him swear to give me space.

I strip out of my clothes, drop them in the hamper, and head for the bathroom.

The water scalds. I let it. I want it to. Steam curls around my skin like a second layer—like armor. I scrub harder than necessary. My nails scrape over old scars. Places he touched. Places they touched. Places I’ve since reclaimed, but that still hum with memory.

I tilt my head under the spray and whisper his name without meaning to. Saxon. Like a curse. Like a confession. Like the first sin I ever wanted to repeat.

The steam can’t fog the truth: I hate him. I want him. I don’t know what that makes me.

When I finally shut off the water, my skin is raw and pink. I dry off with slow hands, avoiding the mirror. I slip into a tank top and sleep shorts, grab my old hoodie, and throw it on like armor.

The bedroom is cool. Quiet. Safe. But the silence scratches. I double-check the windows. The door. The closet. Again. Still nothing. But I feel it. That hum beneath the surface. That buzz behind the walls.

I climb into bed. Lie still. Let the darkness press in.

And then… I dream. It starts the way it always does.

Hands. Calloused and reverent. Sliding up my thighs, tracing my ribs, worshipping me like he regrets every breath he’s ever stolen.

He doesn’t speak in my dreams, but his mouth says everything.

Kisses that bruise. A tongue that punishes.

He takes me like I’m the last beautiful thing left in a burning world. And I let him. I beg him.

I wake with a soft gasp, tangled in sweat-damp sheets and shame.

The ceiling fan spins overhead like an accusation.

My chest heaves. My thighs ache. And for one terrifying, traitorous second—I hope the dream wasn’t just a dream.

I press the heels of my hands into my eyes. Trying to scrub away the filth. The heat. The want. But it clings. Just like him. I don’t know what’s worse. That I still feel him in my dreams. Or that some part of me wants him to be real.