[Sera]
The bell stops ringing. The door's been shut for a solid ten seconds now, but my body hasn't gotten the memo.
I'm gripping the counter so hard my knuckles have gone bone-white, and my arms are shaking—not the subtle kind you can play off, the deep kind that starts somewhere behind your lungs and works its way out like an aftershock. Every nerve's firing at once, screaming threat at a man who's already gone.
The milk pitcher's still sitting on the counter where I abandoned it, foam pooling over the rim in a slow white spill nobody's bothered to wipe. The shop feels wrong, like the air pressure shifted and hasn't equalized. Mia's frozen behind the pastry case, a rag dangling from her fingers, eyes darting between me and the door.
Lulu's the one who breaks me out of it. She makes a
