Page 52 of This Life of Mine

“Don’t apologize. I appreciate you providing context,” I tell her.

“Call or text me if you need anything,” I say.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” she asks. “Maybe?” She adds.

“I’ll be at the shop,” I answer. “You shouldn’t have to go in after what you’ve been through. You have employees to help, don’t you?”

She gives a faint smile. “We’ll see.”

She meets my gaze. “Goodnight, Alex.”

“Goodnight, Lina.”

I step out of her room and close the door behind me. I walk down the hall and out the front door, listening until I hear the automatic front door lock slide home.

My phone vibrates in my pocket.

It’s Reese texting me.

I did fuck up. I completely forgot to text Reese.

Filling out a police report was a bad idea. I put my information out there. But I didn’t do it for me. I did it for her. She needed to know she wasn’t alone.

“Fuck!” I nearly scream.

I jog down the street toward my place, the night cool against my skin.

The noise in my head eases. Thoughts of her and everything about tonight soften into something quieter.

The job isn’t over.

But tonight, she sleeps in her own bed. And that’s a win I’ll fucking take.

Chapter seventeen

Lina

Sleep didn’t come easy. It arrived in shallow waves, never deep enough to pull me under. I woke before the alarm, my body heavy and my mind already racing.

Pain announces itself in places I didn’t know could ache so fiercely. My hands, knees, legs—swollen and sensitive. Even the muscles along my back protest when I sit up, a dull echo of concrete, panic, and force.

I swing my feet to the floor and wince, breathing through it the way I’ve trained myself to when my body feels foreign.

I go straight to the bathroom.

The mirror even seems to flinch.

Bruises bloom along my arms—purple fingerprints, angry and unmistakable around my wrists and under my jaw. Scrapes cover me from head to toe. Evidence of impact. Of proximity. Of hands that should have never touched me again.

There’s no panic. No tears. Just a hollow quiet where emotion should be. Numbness—like my body decided to absorb this before my heart could weigh in.

I brace my palms on the sink and breathe.

Sleep hadn’t softened anything. If anything, it pronounced it. All night, my mind replayed the same fragments—his grip, how easily he occupied space that wasn’t his. The familiarity of it makes my skin crawl.

And beneath the numbness, something else begins to surface. Anger. Slow and venomous. A red-hot knot lodged deep in my chest, pulling tighter with each remembered betrayal.

Angry that those hands were allowed near me for all those years. Angry that I stayed. Angry that after everything it took to rebuild my life, he still managed to breach my wall.