Wren's pov
Joel has gone quiet.
This isn't relief. It's the opposite. I learned years ago, in the bruising school of loving someone whose affection was really just control wearing a softer mask, that quiet means he's regrouping. Quiet means he's choosing a new angle, sharpening it in the dark. Lena has spotted him outside twice this week, never long enough for me to call the police, always long enough for the message to land. A shadow at the corner, a figure watching from across the street. Enough to make my skin crawl without giving me solid ground to stand on.
I don't tell Rhett.
I know exactly why. Saying it out loud would force a conversation about the last time I called him, how my fingers found his number before my brain caught up. It would mean admitting that in moments of fear, he's become my first instinct. That reaching for him feels dangerously close to something I'm not ready to name. Not when I'm still developing a photo of my father's terrified face in my darkroom. Not when I'm drowning in a fellowship portfolio I keep pretending I'm ready for, not when a dead man's eyes from a news article keep bleeding into dreams I've had since I was four years old.
I have a limited amount of emotional space right now, and I'm rationing it like water in a drought. Some truths have to wait their turn.
>>>
Professor Hadley's seminar stretches across two hours on Wednesday afternoons, and I lose myself in it the way I always do when something demands every piece of me. We're dissecting liminal spaces this week, my series on abandoned buildings, places caught between what they were and whatever they might become, hollow hallways. Faded paint. Rooms holding their breath.
He pins three of my prints to the board and steps back, studying them with that quiet intensity of his, like he's waiting for the images to confess something.
"Reyes Fellowship," he says simply. "These are strong enough."
"You've said that before."
"I'll keep saying it until you hit submit." He glances at me over the prints, eyes kind but unflinching. "When are you submitting, Wren?"
"Soon."
He knows what "soon" means coming from me. He doesn't push, just moves on to the next student. I stare at my own work on the table, technically solid, emotionally raw, and feel the familiar twist in my chest. The folder on my laptop has been waiting for three weeks. The submit button sits there like a dare I keep dodging. Every time I hover over it, the same fears rush in. What if it's not good enough? What if it is, and it still changes nothing about the fractures I feel deepening in my life?
I file the anxiety away. I'm very good at filing things lately. It's the only way I've kept moving.
>>>
Walking to the car park at six-thirty, the late afternoon light stretches long across campus. That's when I feel it, footsteps behind me that don't belong to the usual scatter of students.
It takes about forty seconds for certainty to settle in my bones. The pace matches mine too perfectly. When I slow, they slow. When I turn a corner, there's a deliberate beat before they follow. This isn't Joel's style. Joel crowds you, pushes for confrontation. This is colder, professional. Someone who wants me to feel watched without getting close enough to be identified.
My heart kicks hard against my ribs. Fear blooms hot and immediate, mixing with the exhaustion I've been carrying for days. I keep my pace steady, refusing to run, but my palms are slick. I pull out my phone before the panic can fully take hold.
Rhett answers on the first ring.
"I'm being followed," I say, keeping my voice level, the same tone I use in critiques when my work is being torn apart. Calm on the surface while everything underneath screams. "Not Joel. Someone else. East side of the campus car park, heading toward the Meridian Street exit."
He doesn't waste time questioning me. No "Are you sure?" Just a quiet command. "Stay on the phone. Take the next left."
I turn left, breath shallow. His voice fills my ear, low, steady, grounding. He guides me through four careful turns, talking about nothing and everything, just to stay present. The sound of him wraps around me like armor. For those few minutes, I'm not alone in this. Someone knows exactly where I am, someone cares enough to guide me out.
The footsteps vanish after the third turn.
"I think they're gone," I whisper.
"Keep walking. Two more minutes."
I do. My legs feel unsteady by the time I reach my car. I slide in, lock the doors, and grip the wheel until my knuckles pale.
"I'm in the car."
"Drive straight home. Don't stop." There's a pause before he hangs up, a half-second where his control slips. Beneath the professional calm, I hear it, something raw. Fear, not just for the situation, but for 'me'. It lodges in my chest like a hook, pulling at emotions I've been trying desperately to keep boxed up. The way he stepped in without hesitation. The way his voice held me together. It makes me feel safe and terrified all at once, because wanting that kind of safety from him feels like stepping off the same kind of ledge as those liminal spaces in my photos.
I drive home with tears blurring the edges of my vision. I don't call him back. I wouldn't know what to say. 'Thank you' feels too small. 'What is this between us?' feels too enormous.
>>>
Inside the apartment, Lena's out. The quiet presses in. I sit on the couch and just breathe, replaying the last fifteen minutes. The phantom footsteps. Rhett's voice in my ear. The way my body leaned into the sound of him like it had been waiting for rescue. My heart hasn't slowed. The fear lingers, tangled now with a confusing warmth, gratitude, attraction, something deeper that makes my stomach flutter even as my hands tremble.
I think about my father's face in that kitchen window photo. The raw fear I captured. The secrets I suspect he's guarding. I think about the dead man whose eyes match the ones that haunt my childhood dreams. Everything feels connected, closing in, and I'm standing in the middle with no clear way through.
At midnight, I open my laptop in the dark kitchen. The Reyes Fellowship portal glows on the screen. My application has been complete for weeks. I've opened this page over and over, closing it each time with excuses about perfectionism, timing, fear of failure. But tonight, something shifts.
I stop explaining it to myself. I press submit.
The confirmation loads. The screen flashes success.
I close the laptop and sit there, staring at nothing. My hands are shaking, not just a little, but deep, uncontrollable tremors that travel up my arms. It isn't really about the fellowship. That was the safe container I poured everything else into. The real weight is everything I've been carrying, the footsteps in the dark, my father's hidden terror, the dead man who feels like a memory I was never meant to keep, Joel's looming shadow, and Rhett, steady, magnetic Rhett, who makes me feel seen and protected in ways that both comfort and unravel me.
Tears slip down my cheeks before I can stop them. I let them come. In the quiet kitchen, with the city humming faintly outside, I allow myself to feel the full storm. The vulnerability of being watched. The ache of family secrets I'm afraid to uncover. The terrifying possibility that Rhett is becoming someone I need. The courage it took to finally hit submit, not just on the application, but on trusting that maybe, somehow, I can move forward even when the ground feels like it's shifting beneath me.
I sit with the shaking, with the fear and the fragile hope tangled inside it, and for once, I don't file it away. I let it be there. All of it.