TRIGGER WARNING: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Emma:
The firehouse felt too quiet once Kaden left on the call.
A chimney fire two blocks away. “Small,” he’d said. “Thirty minutes, max.”
But there was something in my chest that wouldn’t settle.
A cold, creeping certainty that safety was a temporary thing—and I’d already used my share of it.
Avery slept in the cot beside my bed, tiny breaths soft and even. I sat awake on the thin mattress, knees pulled to my chest as snow pressed thick against the windows, muting the outside world into a heavy white silence.
The silence that comes before something breaks.
A radio crackled in the hallway. Then the engine roared outside and the siren wailed to life.
I watched the red glow fade.
And then I felt it.
A shift in the air.
A pressure.
A prickle dow
