She holds up a bright pink loofah. “This is non-negotiable.”
“I wasn’t going to negotiate,” I say.
She smiles, then catches herself and looks away, tucking her hair behind her ear again.
There it is.
I look away too. Because staring feels dangerous.
At the checkout, I subtly shift so I can see the door and the windows at the same time. I clock everyone who walks in. The guy in the Carhartt jacket. The teenage couple. The older woman with a cart full of cleaning supplies.
No one looks wrong.
That doesn’t mean anything.
Outside, Fiona exhales like she didn’t realize she was holding her breath.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says. “Just… being in public feels weird.”
“Normal,” I tell her. “Your brain’s still in survival mode.”
She nods slowly. “Does it ever stop?”
I think about the nights I still wake up staring at the ceiling. The way I still map exits in every room. The way quiet sometimes feels louder than gunfire. “Gets quieter,” I say. “That’s something.”
She seems to accept that.
We hit the grocery store next. She grabs a cart like she’s reclaiming something. I follow her down the aisles, still watching reflections, still tracking movement.
She pauses in front of the spice rack. “Okay, serious question. What do you actually eat?”
“Food,” I say.
She squints. “Do you cook?”
“I can.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
I smirk. “I do. I’m just not emotionally attached to it.”
She laughs. A real laugh. It does something stupid to my chest.
“I’ll cook tonight,” I hear myself say. “My famous steak dinner.”
“Famous, huh?”
“Among very selective audiences.”
She grins. “I’m intrigued.”
We load the cart with steaks, potatoes, asparagus, and—at her insistence—something called “fancy butter” that looks like it belongs in a museum.
While she debates between two kinds of chocolate, my phone buzzes. I glance down.
HAVEN 7 GROUP: