Ariel woke to the sound of her own heartbeat.
Too loud, too fast, like it was trying to punch its way out of her ribs.
For a disoriented moment, she didn't know where she was. The ceiling above her was unfamiliar,smooth, pale, uncracked. Not the clinic's harsh fluorescents, not the bookshop's familiar yellowed plaster, not the raw beams of the warehouse.
A safe house, she remembered. Mara's voice. Chris's hand on her elbow. Arlo's arms around her as she broke.
And before that,Harry's laugh turned weapon. Berry's voice, caught forever in a recording that had carved a new fault line through her chest.
She swallowed. Her mouth tasted like salt and regret.
Dim light seeped around the edges of the curtain. The rain had gentled to a soft, persistent drizzle, the sound like fingers drumming on glass. Her body felt heavy, the kind of weight that comes after running too far, too fast, for too long.
She turned her head slowly.
The chair by the window was occupied again.
Chris sat curled into it awkwardly, long legs folded, hoodie pulled over his T‑shirt, head tipped back against the cushion. His eyes were closed. One hand rested near his chest, fingers still flexing occasionally, like his muscles hadn't gotten the message that he'd allowed himself to doze.
On the small table between the bed and the chair, the recorder sat dark and silent.
Ariel's chest tightened.
"Hey," she croaked.
Chris's eyes snapped open immediately. Sleep burned out of them in an instant, replaced by alertness. For a heartbeat, he looked like he was still elsewhere,hallways, guns, bad nights—then he focused on her.
"You're awake," he said softly.
"Again," she said. Her voice sounded raw, like she'd been screaming.
Which she had.
He pushed himself out of the chair, coming closer, but not crowding. "Pain?" he asked, habitual.
"Depends," she said. "Physical or the part where my best friend helped turn my shop into a crime scene?"
His jaw flexed. "Both?"
"Six and… I don't know," she said. "Use infinity for the second one."
A corner of his mouth twitched, but his eyes were serious. "Mara checked your stitches. They survived your meltdown."
"Great," she muttered. "At least something did."
He glanced at the recorder, then back at her. "We can stop there," he said. "You don't have to hear more today."
She stared at the device.
It looked harmless. A little black box on a table in a quiet room. It held land mines.
"How much is left?" she asked.
"A lot," he said honestly. "Some bad. Some worse. Some… clarifying."
"Clarifying," she echoed. "Like hearing Berry try to talk him out of using my shelves while still running his books?"
"Like hearing where the buyers came from," he said. "Who else said yes when they should have run."
Her stomach lurched. "I don't know if I can take more people I love falling off pedestals today."
"Then don't," Chris said. "You're allowed to hit pause on hell."
She let out a shaky breath. "If I stop now, will it be worse when I start again?"
"Probably," he said. "But stopping doesn't make you weak. It makes you human."
She rolled her eyes faintly. "You suck at pep talks."
"I'm not trying to pep," he said. "I'm trying to keep you from shattering all at once."
She picked at a loose thread on the blanket. "How long was I out?" she asked.
"Few hours," he said. "Mara says your body finally realized it's not a machine."
"And Arlo?" she asked. The name tasted strange and familiar both.
"He left for a bit," Chris said. "Had to go remind people what happens when they use your name as currency." A beat. "He'll be back."
"He always is," she murmured.
Silence stretched, filled by rain and the low hum of the house.
"Chris," she said.
"Yeah?"
"When I was… on the floor," she said, heat creeping up her neck, "you looked like you were going to… I don't know. Do something. And then you didn't."
He hesitated. "Arlo had you," he said. "There wasn't room for me in that radius without making it about my ego instead of your pain."
"It hurt you," she said quietly. "Watching."
His gaze met hers, something raw flickering there before he smoothed it.
"Yes," he said simply.
"Why?" she asked. "You keep saying I'm 'in your charge,' but this feels… bigger. Messier."
His throat worked. For a second, something dangerously close to truth rose in his eyes.
Then he swallowed it.
"Because I don't like watching good people realize the ground under them was quicksand," he said. "It reminds me of things I can't fix."
Not an answer. Not the whole one. But a piece.
She let it sit between them, fragile.
Downstairs, a door closed. Voices murmured,Mara's, low and exasperated; another, deeper, recognizable even through walls.
Arlo.
Chris straightened instinctively, shoulders squaring. "You don't have to see him right now," he said quickly. "If you want, I'll tell him to give you space."
Ariel thought of the note. You stayed. Of his arms around her as she'd sobbed herself empty. Of the recorder he'd placed on the table, knowing exactly how it would cut her and doing it anyway because she'd asked.
"I don't want space," she said slowly. "I want… answers. And I want him to see what they're doing to me."
Chris nodded once. "Okay," he said. "You get dressed, if you want. Or stay in the T‑shirt. No one's judging."
She glanced down. The shirt hung on her—too big, definitely not hers. It smelled faintly like detergent and someone else's cologne.
"If I wear his shirt, he doesn't get to comment," she said.
"That one's mine," Chris said.
She blinked. "Oh."
Heat brushed his cheekbones. "Laundry's on rotation," he said. "Don't read into it."
She shouldn't have, but there it was: an odd, quiet comfort in wearing something that smelled more like clean and kitchen and rain than smoke and gunpowder.
"Fine," she said. "Bring him in."
Chris's mouth twitched. "Yes, ma'am."
He slipped out.
Left alone for a moment, Ariel let her head fall back against the pillow propped behind her. The ceiling wavered slightly.
She wasn't ready.
She also couldn't live another day not knowing what else Harry had said about her when she wasn't in the room. What other plans had been made that used words like "bookshop girl" and "leverage" and "she won't suspect."
Footsteps approached. Two sets. One steady, lighter. One with that unhurried, predatory cadence she would have known in the dark.
Arlo paused in the doorway when he saw her awake and sitting upright.
He looked different than he had in the warehouse. Less composed. Something in the set of his shoulders spoke of hours spent grinding his teeth against other men's stupidity.
His eyes scanned the room automatically,Mara's absence, Chris against the far wall, the recorder on the table,then settled on Ariel.
"Morning," he said. "Or… whatever hour this qualifies as."
"Storm o'clock," she said.
A flicker of a smile. "Accurate."
He moved closer, but stopped well outside arm's reach, as promised. His hands were empty, no weapons, no files.
"How are you?" he asked.
"Pulled apart. Stitched up. Repeat," she said. "You?"
"Same," he said.
There was a beat of quiet that felt like a held breath.
"Do you want to hear more?" he asked. "Or do we wait?"
She met his gaze. "If I stop, will you try to talk me out of starting again?" she asked.
"No," he said. "I'll try to make sure you're not alone when you do."
Her throat tightened. "Then we keep going," she said.
His jaw flexed. He nodded once and picked up the recorder, thumb hovering over the button.
"Wait," she said.
He stopped immediately.
She looked between him and Chris. Two men she shouldn't trust. Two men she had, in different ways, chosen to anyway.
"Whatever is on there," she said, "whatever else they did with my name… when this is over, we don't go back to pretending I was just some… bookshop girl you stumbled into."
Arlo's eyes softened, dangerous and sincere. "We passed that point the day you handed me a love story and told me you believed in pain and healing in the same breath," he said.
Chris's voice came from the wall, quiet but steady. "We don't get to use 'pretend' as a shield anymore," he said. "Not after this."
Ariel drew a breath.
"Okay," she said. "Then hit play."
Arlo's thumb pressed the button.
The recorder clicked, hissed, then settled into the low murmur of a crowded room. Ariel recognized the clink of cutlery, the distant hum of the espresso machine, the particular echo of voices against tiled walls.
The cafe again.
Berry's voice came first this time.
"Harry, please," she said. No laughter, no teasing. Just exhaustion. "We've talked about this."
Harry sighed on the recording, familiar and suddenly hateful. "We're not doing this again," he said. "I told you, it's handled."
"It's not," Berry argued. A chair scraped. Ariel pictured her twisting a napkin in her hands. "You're still using the shop. You're still taking calls in her back room. You're still letting those men walk past her counter like she's furniture."
Harry's tone sharpened. "I'm keeping us afloat," he snapped. "You like the dress you picked? The venue? The deposit we put down? That money didn't come from fairy dust and paperback sales."
Ariel's fingers curled in the blanket.
"Our marriage is near," Berry said, voice cracking slightly. "Harry, listen to yourself. We're a week away and you're still in it. Please, just… end what you're doing. Pay him off and walk away. Ariel will go to prison if this blows up. They'll trace everything back to her."
There was a beat of silence.
Then Harry laughed.
Not kindly. Not the way he had at Ariel's jokes.
"No one is sending the bookshop girl to prison," he said. "She's a civilian. A prop. If anything happens, Arlo takes the heat. That's how this works."
"You're wrong," Berry said, steel under the fear now. "He'll tie up loose ends. You know that. You've seen it. And she's the loosest one."
"I said I'll handle it," Harry repeated, each word clipped. "Why can't you just trust that I'm doing this for us?"
Berry's breath hitched. "This isn't 'for us' anymore," she said. "This is about you not wanting to owe anyone. You're dragging her through your pride."
"Careful," he warned.
"What are you going to do?" Berry shot back. "Run another drop behind my back? Call your 'buyer' and see how much longer they're willing to wait?"
Static fuzzed the edges of the sound. Cups clinked harder than necessary. The tension in the air was almost audible.
"Our marriage is near," Berry said again, softer now, pleading. "I want to walk into it without wondering if the front row is full of men who know exactly how often I lied to my best friend."
A heavy exhale. Harry, frustrated.
"I told you," he said. "One more series of transfers. That's it. Johnson gets his cut, the buyer gets their product, and we're out. You, me, white dress, happily ever after. Ariel never knows."
"And if something goes wrong?" Berry whispered.
"Then Johnson does what he does," Harry said. "And we survive it."
There was a sound on the recording then that Ariel couldn't place—a half‑choked inhale, somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
Berry.
"So that's it?" Berry said. "You're really… Harry, if she finds out, if they come for her, she's not built for that. She's not like us."
Silence.
When Harry spoke again, his voice was colder.
"She's been bait from the start," he said. "That's what makes it work. People look at her and see innocence. They lower their guard. They don't think to look past the daffodils and paperbacks."
The words landed like ice in Ariel's veins.
Bait.
From the start.
On the recording, Berry's voice dropped, brittle.
"You… you just called her bait," she said. "Like she's… like she's a piece on a hook, not a person."
Harry snorted. "Don't go soft on me now," he said. "You knew what this was."
There was a long pause. Ariel imagined Berry staring at him, at the man she'd chosen, the man whose last name she was supposed to take in a week.
When Berry spoke again, her voice was different.
Flat.
Empty.
"Fine," Berry said. "Then just… kill her."
The room in the safe house went dead silent.
On the recorder, she kept going.
"If she was meant to be bait," Berry said, the words slow and precise, "then cut the line. Let it be done. She's been sitting there like a lamb in your doorway for so long, she doesn't even know what she's worth to men like him."
Ariel's ears rang.
"It's cruel," Berry added. "Keeping her there. Letting her believe that shop is safety. If you're not going to stop, then at least… end it. Quickly. Before someone else does it worse."
Harry cursed under his breath. "You don't mean that," he said. "You're upset."
"I mean it," Berry said. There was a tremor under the steel now, but the words didn't waver. "Because if she lives through this without knowing what you did, she'll keep trusting people like you. And Arlo. And whoever your buyer is this week. She'll keep walking into storms with flowers in her hand."
A chair scraped. Fabric rustled.
"Berry—" Harry started.
"I'm tired," she said. "I'm tired of waking up every day wondering if I'm going to have to choose between the man I love and the girl who held my hand through every nightmare I ever had. I can't carry both of you forever."
The recording glitched, a second of static cutting across them. When it cleared, Harry's voice came sharper.
"Don't ever say that in front of Johnson," he hissed. "You understand? Not even as a joke."
"Who said I was joking?" Berry replied.
The file ended there. The soft click of the recorder stopping sounded louder than any gunshot.
Ariel didn't move.
She didn't cry.
She didn't scream.
She just… stopped.
It was as if someone had pulled the plug inside her. Her mind registered the words, lined them up, tried to slot them into the shape of the woman she knew—the girl in cat pajamas, the bride‑to‑be twirling in a blue‑sashed dress, the arms that had held her through nightmares of twisted metal and wildflowers.
The images didn't fit.
Berry saying kill her didn't fit.
Berry calling her bait didn't fit.
Her vision tunneled. The room narrowed to the little black device and the last echo of her best friend's voice.
Chris saw the color drain from her face.
"Ariel," he said.
No response.
Her eyes were open, fixed on nothing.
"Ariel," he repeated, louder now, moving in front of her chair.
Still nothing. No blink. No flinch. Her chest rose and fell, shallow and mechanical.
He reached out and gripped her shoulders, careful of the bandage. The muscles under his hands were rigid. Locked.
"Hey," he said, giving her a small shake. "Ariel. Look at me."
Her head rocked with the movement, but her gaze didn't find his. It slid right past him, like he was a shadow on the wall.
"Ariel." The edge in his tone sharpened. "Come on. Say something. Swear at me. Tell me this was a bad idea. Anything."
Silence.
Her fingers, resting on the armrests, didn't twitch. Her lips parted slightly, but no sound came.
It was like watching a light go out behind someone's eyes without any outward wound.
"Shock," Arlo said quietly.
He'd gone very still while the recording played. Now he set the device down with deliberate care, as if any sudden movement might shatter what was left of her.
Chris turned, anger and fear sparking. "No, she's—"
"Chris," Arlo said, voice flat but not cold. "She's gone inside. You won't drag her back by shaking her."
Chris looked at Ariel again. Really looked.
Her eyes were glassy. Focused somewhere far beyond the safe house walls, beyond the rain, beyond this room. Her breathing was too even, too controlled, like her body had taken over while her mind stepped out.
He dropped his hands from her shoulders, fingers flexing uselessly.
"I shouldn't have let you play that one," he muttered. The self‑reproach was a physical thing, heavy in his chest. "I should've—"
"You did exactly what she asked," Arlo cut in. "Don't turn her choice into another reason to blame yourself."
"It's Berry," Chris snapped. "It's not just… some lieutenant. It's—"
"I know who it is," Arlo said. His own jaw was clenched hard enough that a muscle jumped. "I know what that sentence cost."
He moved slowly, stepping into Ariel's line of sight, then lowering himself to one knee in front of her chair.
He didn't touch her.
He just brought his face into her unmoving stare.
"Ariel," he said, using the same tone he'd used in the warehouse when she'd been bleeding and shaking. Low. Grounded. Not ordering. Anchoring.
Her gaze didn't flicker.
"Can you hear me?" he asked.
Nothing.
He inhaled, exhaled. Thought.
"She was tired," he said, not to Chris, but to Ariel. "Berry. You heard it. You felt it. She was fraying at the edges. That doesn't excuse what she said,but it explains the shape of it."
Still nothing. No flare. No anger. The lack of reaction scared him more than the sobbing had.
"You are not bait," Arlo went on, voice growing steadier. "You are not a hook. You are not a tool they get to define. You are the reason any of this matters at all."
Her lashes fluttered once.
He pressed in. "Harry used your shop," he said. "Berry tried to stop him. When she realized she couldn't, she broke in a way that made her say the worst thing she could imagine. That sentence is on her, not on you. Do you understand?"
Her lips parted. A tiny breath escaped—more like a sigh than speech.
"Arlo," Chris said, tension coiled tight. "If she stays like this—"
"She won't," Arlo said. "She's survived worse than words. Even these."
He reached out then, very slowly, giving her time to recoil if she wanted to. His hand hovered in the air for a second, then settled lightly over hers on the armrest.
Her skin was cold.
"You can hate them," he said. "Both of them. Or forgive them. Or do something in between. But you do not disappear because they were too small for the love you gave them."
A faint tremor ran through her fingers under his.
Chris swallowed, throat tight. He'd seen shock before,on battlefields, in alleyways, in hospital corridors where the news was too much and the body shut down. He'd never seen it on her. Not like this.
His own hands shook.
He pressed them into his pockets, nails biting palms.
Arlo's eyes never left Ariel's face.
"I need you here," he said, softer now, almost a plea. "Not in that cafe. Not in your shop. Here. With me. With Chris. With Mara downstairs getting ready to yell at all of us for raising your blood pressure."
For a long moment, nothing changed.
Then, slowly, her eyes focused.
Not all the way. Not sharp. But the glassiness thinned. The room came back into view.
She blinked.
"Ariel?" Chris asked, barely breathing the name.
Her gaze shifted a fraction. Found him. Drifted back to Arlo.
Her voice, when it emerged, was thin and frayed. "She meant it," she whispered. "She said… kill her. That wasn't… panic. That was… tired."
Arlo didn't look away. "Yes," he said. "She meant it when she said it."
A hollow laugh broke out of Ariel's chest, ugly and small. "You're very bad at lying," she rasped.
"I promised you I'd stop," he said.
Her fingers tightened under his.
"And if you start," she said faintly, "I'll hear it now. In every word."
"Good," he said. "Keep me honest."
She drew a shaky breath. "I don't know what to do with this," she admitted. "With… her. With them. With the part of me that still wants her back on my couch in cat pajamas, complaining about which girl gets to be the princess."
"You don't have to decide today," Chris said quietly.
She looked at him again. His eyes were rimmed red. He'd wiped his face, but she could see the faint track a tear had left.
Somewhere, deep in the part of her that wasn't numb, that hurt worse and better at the same time.
"The part that's numb," she said slowly, "how long does that last?"
"Depends," Chris said. "Sometimes it cracks in an hour. Sometimes it takes days. Sometimes it comes back in pieces when you least expect it."
"Like at three a.m. over a cereal bowl," Arlo added. "Or in the middle of a sentence that has nothing to do with any of this."
She gave a humorless huff. "Looking forward to it," she said.
Arlo squeezed her hand once, then let go, as if reminding himself of the boundary she'd drawn.
"I'm going to step out," he said. "Give you space to hate us both in peace. Chris will stay."
Her fingers twitched. "Don't," she said.
He paused. "Don't… what?"
"Don't leave," she murmured. "Not yet. If you… if you go now, it feels like everyone who said they loved me is walking away after setting the room on fire."
He froze.
Behind her, Chris swallowed.
"Okay," Arlo said. "Then I won't."
He shifted, lowering himself into the second chair by the window, close but not crowding. Chris stayed where he was, leaning against the wall within arm's reach of her.
Three points in a small room. A triangle held together by pain, secrets, and a choice that had dragged them all past the point of no return.
Outside, the drizzle continued, gentle and relentless.
Inside, Ariel stared at the silent recorder and felt the shock settle into something colder, more solid.
Harry had used her.
Berry had tried to save her and, in failing, had become part of the hurt.
The girl who'd always believed love could break and heal in equal measure sat between a man who'd proven the breaking and one who knew more about her than she did—and, for the first time, didn't have the energy to decide which one scared her more.
She didn't cry.
She didn't scream.
She just sat there, numb and breathing, while two dangerous men watched over the pieces and waited—
for the moment she decided whether this would be the part of her story where she stayed broken…
or the one where she learned how to stand with the numbness still in her bones and keep walking anyway.
Ariel didn't remember deciding to move.
One minute she was in the chair, the recorder a small black hole on the table, Arlo and Chris twin shadows in her periphery. The next, her body had already shifted, muscles stiff but obeying, feet searching for the floor.
"Ariel," Chris said, straightening. "Slow."
"I'm fine," she murmured.
It wasn't true, but the words came out anyway, brittle habit wrapped in syllables.
She pushed herself up. Her side burned, sharp and hot, but less than the cold in her chest. She stood there a moment, swaying, fingers white‑knuckled on the armrest.
Arlo half‑rose out of his chair.
"You don't need to prove anything," he said. "Sit."
"I'm not proving," she said. "I'm… moving."
"To where?" Chris asked.
"Bathroom," she said. "Before my skeleton mutinies."
The corner of his mouth twitched despite everything. "Fair," he said. "Want a hand or are we pretending you suddenly love independence?"
She hesitated.
The numbness made choices heavy, like everything was wading through syrup. Being touched felt like too much and not enough at the same time.
"Just… be close," she said quietly. "In case I fall."
"Done," Chris said.
He didn't offer his arm this time. He stayed just half a step away, matching her pace as she shuffled toward the small en suite Mara had pointed out earlier. Arlo remained by the window, eyes tracking every inch she moved.
At the bathroom door, Ariel paused, one hand on the frame. "Do not hover outside like guard dogs," she said, some faint dryness returning to her voice. "I can pee alone."
"Medically advisable," Arlo said.
Chris snorted. "We'll be right here," he said. "Shout if gravity wins."
She slipped inside and turned the lock.
The click was small.
It sounded, to her, like a vault sealing.
The quiet in the bathroom was different. Closer. The fan hummed softly; a single light buzzed overhead. She braced her hands on the sink and leaned in, breath fogging a patch of mirror.
Her reflection looked wrong,eyes swollen, skin pale, hair tangled. Berry's voice echoed in her head on a loop.
So just kill her.
The words finally landed.
Not as a distant line on a recording, but as a dagger that knew exactly where to slide in.
Her chest seized. Air clawed at her throat and wouldn't go down.
She heard herself make a sound,small, broken. Then another, louder. Her fingers curled against the sink edge so hard her nails hurt.
"She meant it," Ariel whispered to the empty room. "She meant it, she meant it, she meant it—"
The numbness cracked all at once.
A scream tore out of her.
Not the sobbing from earlier, not the wail muffled against Arlo's chest. This was raw, high, an animal sound that scraped her throat on the way out.
It bounced off tile and porcelain, too big for the small space.
Outside, both men jolted.
"Ariel?" Chris called, already pushing off the wall.
Another scream. Louder. Words tangled in it—"bait," "kill," "Berry"—but they came out shredded.
Chris reached the door in three strides. His hand hit the knob. It rattled uselessly.
Locked.
"Ariel!" he shouted, pounding once. "Open the door."
No answer. Just another cry, strangled and hoarse.
He slammed his palm against the wood. "Ariel, open it!"
Arlo was there a heartbeat later, jaw clenched, eyes darker than the hallway.
"What happened?" he snapped.
"She went in, and then—" Chris gestured helplessly as another scream ripped through the door. "She's not answering."
Arlo stepped closer, pressing his ear to the painted surface. The sound on the other side hit him square in the chest.
Shock had cracked.
The delayed realization he'd been bracing for had arrived, and it had chosen the worst possible moment.
"Ariel," he said, raising his voice. "It's Arlo. Open the door."
Her answer was a choked, wordless "No!"
Then, more words, slamming into each other.
"She—she said—bait—just kill—how could she—how could—"
Her voice broke into sobs that sounded like they were tearing her from the inside.
"Move," Chris hissed, shouldering in like he might kick the door down.
Arlo caught his arm. "Wait."
"Wait?" Chris turned on him, fury flaring. "She's breaking in there and you want me to wait?"
"If you hit that door hard enough, it's going to fly into her," Arlo said, voice cold but controlled. "You want to add a concussion to this?"
Chris's hands curled into fists at his sides. He glared at the wood like he could burn through it.
"Ariel," Arlo called again, louder. "You are safe. You're not back there. You are here, in the house. With us."
"Don't say my name!" she shouted back, voice cracking. "You knew, you both—you all knew—and she—she—"
The rest dissolved into another scream, hoarse and raw.
Inside, Ariel slid down the wall, back scraping paint, legs folding under her until she hit the cold tile. Her hands clamped over her ears, as if she could press the recordings out of her skull.
She saw Berry's face, laughing in cat pajamas.
Heard Berry's voice: Then just… kill her.
The betrayal and the love sat side by side in her chest, two truths that couldn't coexist and yet refused to move.
Her breathing came in hard, stuttering gasps. The edges of her vision blurred.
Outside, Chris pressed his forehead to the door, his own breath rough. "Ariel, please," he said. "Open up. Just let us in. You don't have to do this alone."
"I am alone!" she cried. "Berry's gone, Harry's—Harry, and you—you work for him and he—he—nothing was ever real—"
The words hit him like blows.
Arlo's jaw tightened.
"This is shock," he said under his breath. "Delayed. She's reliving it, folding everything into one explosion. If we force our way in now, she's just going to see more people who took her choices."
"So we stand here and listen?" Chris shot back. "That's your plan?"
"For the next sixty seconds," Arlo said. "Yes."
He raised his voice again. "Ariel. You have every right to scream. To hate. To break things. But you are not allowed to hurt yourself in there. Do you hear me?"
Silence. Then a thud, small but distinct. Something—maybe her fist, maybe a heel—against the wall.
"I already did," she sobbed. "I hurt myself when I believed—when I trusted—when I—"
Her voice collapsed.
Chris couldn't take it anymore.
He stepped back, ready to throw his weight into the wood.
"Chris," Arlo snapped. "Look at me."
He didn't. His muscles bunched.
"Chris," Arlo said again, more force behind it. "If you break that door, you will scare her more. She will see him on the other side. Not you."
That landed.
Chris stopped, breathing hard.
Inside, Ariel dragged her hands away from her ears just enough to muffled‑shout, "Leave me alone!"
Every syllable was jagged.
Arlo closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. When he opened them, they were steady again.
"We're not leaving," he called back. "But we won't touch the door. You wanted space. This is as much as I'm giving you."
Chris swallowed, still shaking. "We can't just—"
"We can talk," Arlo said. "Words through wood are still choice. Breaking in is not."
He leaned closer, voice dropping.
"Ariel," he said. "Berry failed you. Harry used you. I lied to you. Those are facts. None of them mean you were wrong to love them. Or that love itself is a mistake."
A hoarse laugh came from the other side. "Of course you'd defend love," she rasped. "It's your favorite weapon."
"I weaponize a lot of things," he said. "Doesn't make them less real."
Another sob. Another dull thud.
"You told me," she said, quieter now but still pitched high with pain, "you told me you wouldn't lock doors on me again. And you did. All of you. In your heads. In… in paperwork and secrets and—"
"This lock is yours," Chris said quickly, forehead still against the wood. "You turned it. Not us. That's different."
"It doesn't feel different!" she cried.
He flinched.
Arlo's hand landed briefly on Chris's shoulder. A grounding weight.
"Breathe," Arlo murmured. "For her, if not for you."
Inside, Ariel's breaths were ragged.
Her body had remembered the feeling of being trapped—the car, the warehouse, the chair, the knowledge that someone she loved had said her death might be mercy.
She pressed her palm against the floor, the cool tile sharp against her skin, and forced herself to count.
One. Two. Three.
The sobs started to slow, if only because her throat was shredded.
Her head thunked back against the wall.
"I can't… I can't unknow it," she whispered, the words barely carrying. "It's… it's in everything now. The shop. The couch. The ice cream. The dress. The way she looked at me when I said… when I said I'd always be there. She knew she might not be. She knew, and she let me promise anyway."
Outside, both men went very still.
"Berry's choices are hers," Arlo said. "Not yours. You loving her doesn't make you responsible for the way she broke."
"I should have seen it," Ariel said. "I should have seen… something. Anything."
"People don't go into friendships looking for evidence," Chris said. "They go looking for comfort."
"That's stupid," she whispered.
"It's human," he said. "You're allowed to be that."
Her breathing eased another fraction. The silence between her words stretched.
"Ariel," Arlo said. "If you want us to stay out here until you're ready to open the door, we will. If you want us to go downstairs and leave you with Mara instead, we can. But I am not going to kick this door in and give you one more reason to feel trapped. That's a promise."
"Promises don't mean anything," she murmured.
"Then consider it a threat," he said. "I'm very good at those."
A faint, broken sound escaped her. Not a laugh. Not quite.
Time stretched.
A minute. Two.
Chris's heartbeat pounded in his ears in time with every small movement he could hear inside—the slide of fabric against tile, the rustle of someone curling inward, the occasional uneven inhale.
Then, finally:
The tiny scrape of metal.
The click of the lock turning.
Chris jerked upright.
"Ariel?" he said.
The doorknob turned, sluggish, and then the door opened a few inches. Enough for a sliver of her face to appear in the gap—eyes swollen, cheeks wet, hair stuck to her temples. She looked younger and older at the same time.
"I didn't fall," she said hoarsely. "So you can stop… worrying about gravity."
Relief hit Chris so hard his knees almost buckled.
Arlo let out a quiet breath he'd been holding.
"Good," Chris said, forcing his voice to stay even. "Gravity would lose that fight anyway."
She swallowed. Her hand still ran along the edge of the door, as if she needed the contact.
"I'm… done screaming at tiles for now," she said. "I want the bed. And… and normal. Or whatever passes for it here."
"Toast and coffee?" Chris asked.
"And a shower," Mara's voice chimed as she appeared at the top of the stairs with that uncanny timing again. "I heard shrieking. I'm prescribing hot water and soap."
Ariel's gaze flicked to her, then back to the two men in front of her.
"Don't break down the door," she muttered, more to herself than to them. "Don't make it about you. I can already hear you panicking out here."
Chris's mouth quirked. "We were not panicking," he lied badly.
Arlo didn't bother denying it. "We'll be in the hall," he said. "No touching the lock. Scout's honor."
"You were never a scout," she rasped.
"True," he said. "But I'm trying new things."
Her grip on the door eased. She opened it fully, one small act of trust in a world that had just given her every reason to slam it.
Her legs shook when she tried to take a step. Chris caught the movement and reached out purely on instinct.
"Can I—?" he asked.
She hesitated, then nodded, and let his hand steady her elbow.
"I'm not okay," she said quietly.
"I know," he said. "You don't have to be. You just have to keep moving your feet."
She glanced at Arlo. His eyes met hers, steady and uncharacteristically open.
"You said no more locked doors," she murmured.
"And I meant it," he replied. "This one was yours. That's the only kind that gets a pass."
It wasn't comfort. It wasn't absolution.
It was something she could stand on for the next few minutes.
She let them guide her back out—the rest of the scene unfolding as before: Mara's brusque care, the shower, the clean clothes, the food, the careful jokes that skimmed the surface of normal.
The difference now was a thin, invisible line between the bathroom and the bed—between the moment shock had finally sunk its teeth in and the choice she'd made, shaky and furious, to unlatch the door anyway.
The storm inside her hadn't calmed.
But she'd stopped screaming at tiles and started, in tiny, painful steps, walking through it with witnesses.