SKY’S POV
I almost didn’t go back the following Thursday.
I sat in the parking lot ten minutes before the session, engine off, telling myself there wasn’t anything left to say after what I’d already said the week before. That the wall had cracked exactly as much as it needed to, and pushing further just handed Damian more material for whatever file he was building.
Then I went in anyway, because some part of me had stopped thinking of that hour as a hazard and started thinking of it as the one place all week where I didn’t have to manage anything.
“You almost didn’t come,” Amira said, before I’d even sat down.
“How’d you know?”
“You’re four minutes late. You’ve never been late.” She said it plainly, no judgment in it. “That’s not a criticism. Just an observation.”
“I sat outside f
