Ravenna
He had told me to run.
And I had looked at him and understood, completely and without any confusion, that running was the right thing to do.
So, naturally, I turned around instead.
We stared at each other. Him in his black suit with his jaw carved from something harder than stone, and me with my hair half undone and my pulse so loud in my ears, I was surprised he could not hear it.
I had the strangest thought in that moment. I thought about all the times I had stood in front of Ryder and made myself smaller. All the time, I had folded myself up into nothing because he needed more room. All the silence I had trained myself to keep.
This man looked at me like I had taken up exactly the right amount of space.
He closed the distance in two steps. No warning. No more words.
His
