I choose dark jeans, a soft ash-gray sweater, and the worn sneakers I know I can move fast in if I have to. In the bathroom mirror, I pause for a second, studying the faint bruise along my cheekbone. I dab concealer over it—not to erase it, not to pretend it didn’t happen, but to decide when it will be seen, and by whom. Control, even in small ways, feels new.

Upstairs, Ryan Carter is still asleep, one arm stretched across the bed like a man who believes the night has already been wiped clean, like nothing that happened in the kitchen could possibly survive into morning.

I move through the house with a calm that doesn’t feel like peace—it feels like purpose. Like the moment after a storm when everything is still, but the air is sharp and changed.

The coffee maker hums. The refrigerator light spills out when I open it. Eggs, butter, orange juice, the biscuit dough I picked up two days ago—back when I still thought this weekend would look normal. I line everything up on the counter and realize something unexpected.

My hands aren’t shaking.

I thought courage would feel dramatic, like heat rising in my chest, like something loud and undeniable. Instead, it feels quiet. Cold. Precise. Like winter air that strips everything down to its edges.

I crack the eggs into a bowl, whisking them steadily.

At exactly 7:01, there’s a knock at the front door.

Not hesitant. Not forceful. Just certain.

When I open it, Ethan Brooks stands there, jacket zipped halfway, hair damp from the early Ohio mist, his jaw tight in that familiar way he gets when he’s holding himself back.

For a moment, neither of us speaks.

Then his eyes land on my face.

Everything in him shifts.

Not anger first.

Heartbreak.

The anger comes a second later, sharp and rising, but the heartbreak arrives first—and somehow that hurts more than anything that happened last night.

“You should’ve called me sooner,” he says quietly.

I nod. There’s no defense left to give.

He steps inside, closing the door behind him, his gaze flicking briefly toward the staircase. “Is he up?”

“Not yet.”

Ethan studies me for a second longer, then nods once. “Okay. Then we do this your way.”

That matters more than I expected.

Not just that he came—but that he didn’t come to take over.