Page 5 of Wild Thorns

I stripped it back. Found the core. Let the negative space do the work.

Lila checked in once to bring tea, fragrant and herbal and not from any brand I recognized. Another time she appeared to ask my opinion on a logo that wasn't working, and I spent twenty minutes explaining why the kerning was fighting the concept, why the typeface choice undermined the message, why sometimes the best design decision was to throw everything away and start over.

She listened. Asked questions. Took notes.

Normal things. Professional things. The kind of easy interaction I'd almost forgotten was possible.

With Marcus, I'd learned to be small. To take up less space, make less noise, have fewer opinions. Every creative choice had been filtered through the question of whether he would approve, whether it would make him feel threatened, whether I was being too ambitious, too confident, too much. My work had suffered for it. It's hard to be creative when you're constantly calculating the emotional cost of every choice.

Here, Lila just wanted to know if the kerning was right.

It was such a small freedom. It made me want to cry.

I walked back to the apartment as the sun began its descent, taking the long way through town because I could. Because no one was timing me. Because no one would ask where I'd been, why it had taken so long, whether I'd talked to anyone, and if so, what exactly had I said and why had I smiled like that and who did I think I was, acting like I had the right to exist without his permission.

The freedom of it was dizzying.

The fear underneath it was worse.

I passed the courthouse with its distinctive ironwork, various symbols scattered throughout the design in a repeating pattern. The church where the founding families had worshipped, its steeple white against the deepening blue of the sky. A hardware store that looked like it hadn't been updated since the fifties, the owner nodding at me through the window like he'd known me all my life.

Everyone nodded. Everyone smiled. Everyone looked at me with that same expression, curiosity and something else, something that felt like anticipation.

I told myself it was small-town friendliness. I told myself I was being paranoid.

I told myself a lot of things.

That evening, I sat on my porch and watched the sun disappear through the magnolia tree. The light turned golden, then amber, then a gorgeous purple-pink, the whole sky going soft, strange and beautiful. The preserve beyond the property line grew darker, shadows pooling beneath the trees like spilled ink.

And I could swear I saw movement among the trees.

Shapes. Large shapes. Too large to be deer, moving with a fluid grace that didn't match any animal I knew. They wove between the trunks like they owned the darkness, like they'd been born to it. Three of them, I thought. Maybe four. Like wolves running in formation.

They disappeared into deeper darkness. Told myself it was nothing. Deer. Wild dogs. Shadows playing tricks in the dying light.

But my body knew something my mind wouldn't admit. My shoulders had crept up toward my ears. My hands had curled into fists without my permission. Somewhere deep in my psyche, the part that remembered what it meant to be prey, something was paying very close attention to those woods.

I made myself breathe. Forced myself to unclench. This was exactly the kind of hypervigilance my therapist in Atlanta had warned me about: the way trauma rewires your threat detection until everything feels dangerous, until you can't tell the difference between instinct and anxiety.

You're safe, I told myself. He doesn't know where you are. He can't find you here.

My phone buzzed.

Unknown number.

My heart knew before my eyes finished reading. That cold lurch in my chest, that instant sick certainty.

Serena.

Just my name. No greeting, no message. The sender ID was blocked, but it didn't matter. I knew that style. The economy of it. The way he liked to remind me he was still there, still watching, that distance was an illusion and I would never really escape.

The panic hit like a wave: fast, cold, total.

My vision narrowed to a tunnel. My chest tightened until breathing felt like work. I could feel my pulse in my throat, behind my eyes, in the tips of my fingers where they gripped the phone hard enough to hurt.

How did he get this number?

I'd been so careful. New phone, new carrier, new everything. Paid cash at a gas station outside Birmingham. Told no one except Tara and Janine. Did everything right, and it didn't matter. It never mattered. Because Marcus always found a way in.