I wake to antiseptic and soft light. My body throbs with bruises and glass cuts, the tremor of fear lingering in my muscles. Yet beneath the ache is the steady truth that I survived.
Peanut is curled on my chest beneath the blankets, her tiny purr gently vibrating against my ribs. For the first time since that cage, my body unclenches. I’m safe.
Tiny sits beside the bed, shoulders hunched, elbows braced on his knees. His hands are wrapped in white bandages, faintly stained pink where fresh wounds won't stop bleeding. His eyes are locked on me with a focus so intense it borders on prayer.
My throat tightens. He looks wrecked. Bruised knuckles, dried blood, soot smudged across his jawline. But it’s the raw, unguarded look on his face that steals my breath.
I swallow. “Tiny…”
Relief floods his face. He leans closer, his hands hovering like he’s afraid to touch me and hurt me, even though he was the one who carried me out of a burning hell.
“You’re awake,” he whispers. “Jesus, Baby Girl… you’re awake.”
I reach out, brushing my fingers over the back of his hand. His breath shudders.
“I didn’t save you,” he murmurs, his voice rough with guilt. “I… I should’ve stopped this.”
“Tiny.” He falls silent. I lift his hand and press it against my chest where my heart still beats, shaky but stubborn. “You didn’t save me,” I whisper, watching something break open behind his eyes. “You found me.”
His breath catches.
“I don’t want to be saved,” I continue softly. “I want to live. With choices. With people who see me. With someone who… doesn’t look at me and see a broken thing to fix.”
A long, uneven exhale leaves him.
His thumb brushes my cheek. “I’ve never once seen you as broken.”
The warmth of his touch sinks into me, deep and certain, and something unshakable inside me steadies.
For the first time since he walked into that smoke-filled shelter, he smiles, truly smiles. Not strained or haunted or edged with pain, but soft and unburdened and quietly hopeful, and the sight of it steals my breath in an entirely different way.
I lace my fingers through his, squeezing gently. “Tiny… I’m here.”
His eyes close for a moment, a slow, aching blink. When he opens them again, they shine with something so vulnerable it could undo a lesser person.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “You are.”
“Don’t go anywhere,” he murmurs.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I promise.
He scoots closer, resting his forehead lightly against mine, our breaths mixing in a quiet rhythm that feels like the first peaceful moment in years. He’s not letting go.
22
TINY
Three weeks settle over the compound like a long exhale, carrying us farther from the night we ripped Syvannah from hell. Three weeks of watching the bruises along her ribs fade from dark blue and black to the warm gold of new skin. Three weeks of tracing the thin, healing lines on her arms, the ones that once bled fear and now whisper that she survived. Holding her through nightmares that no longer rip her awake screaming, but still shake her until Peanut climbs onto her chest and settles there like a small, fierce heartbeat.
She heals in small, brave pieces, her body finding a rhythm before my own does. I wake each morning still braced for screams that never come. Most mornings start with my heart already racing, my ears searching the shadows for the sound of a cage door that exists only in memory.
At night, my hand finds the locks without thinking. Two clicks. Sometimes three. I breathe easier only when the metal is solid beneath my palm. Trigger teases me. Torch rolls his eyes. Capone just watches and says nothing. None of them saw her the way I did, curled against the concrete, glass embedded in her skin, her body folded in on itself as if she had tried to disappear to survive.
Walking across the lot, my eyes drift to dark corners first, mapping exits and threats before I remember where we are. I stand behind Syvannah. No one calls it out. They’ve all lived through this kind of aftermath, even if the reasons were different.
Her voice is the thing that snaps the world back into place, soft enough to cut through whatever grip the past has on me.
“It is not linear,” Syvannah tells me when she notices me looking toward the windows or lingering too long at the door. “Healing does not move in a straight line. Not for me, and not for you either.” She says it gently, never once making me feel weak for the truth she sees. I’m learning she is right.