Chapter 153
Emily's POV
I woke up drowning.
Not in water—in memory. My father's hands around my mother's throat, her face turning purple, the wet thud of his boot against her ribs. The apartment reeked of whiskey and blood and my own helplessness, and I was eighteen again, frozen against the kitchen counter with a knife in my hand that I couldn't make myself use.
Then the scene shifted—I was in the parking lot, and his hand cracked across my face so hard my vision whited out. "You think you're safe now?" His breath was hot and rancid against my ear. "You think they can protect you? I own you. I made you. And I'm going to remind you exactly what that means."
I tried to scream but nothing came out, my voice strangled by the same terror that had kept me silent my whole life. He was dragging me toward the van, and I knew—I knew with the certainty of nightmare logic—that once he got me inside, I was never coming back. Ethan and Alex and Mason would never find me. I would disappear into the same black hole that had swallowed my childhood, and this time there was no escape.
"No—" The word finally tore free, raw and broken. "No, please—"
"Emily." A different voice, urgent and familiar, cutting through the nightmare haze. "Emily, wake up. You're safe. Wake up."
My eyes snapped open.
I was thrashing against someone's grip, my body locked in fight-or-flight with no comprehension of where I was. The room was dark and unfamiliar, shapes looming in the shadows, and panic flooded my system like ice water.
Then arms closed around me from behind—solid, warm, unmistakably real—and a low voice murmured against my hair. "I've got you. You're safe. I've got you."
Ethan.
The recognition hit like a circuit completing, and I sagged back against his chest, gasping. My heart was trying to punch through my ribs, and I couldn't seem to get enough air, but his arms were steady around my waist and his breath was warm against my temple and he was real. He was here. I wasn't in that parking lot. I wasn't eighteen. I was—
"Em." Another voice, closer than I expected, and I realized Mason was right there beside the bed, his hand reaching for mine in the dark. His fingers were shaking when they closed around my wrist. "You're okay. We're right here."
"All of us." That was Alex, and I turned my head to find him on my other side, his palm coming up to cup my face with a gentleness that didn't match the intensity burning in his eyes. "You're not alone. Do you understand? You're not alone."
I tried to nod, but the movement dissolved into something closer to a shudder. I was still shaking, I realized distantly. My whole body was vibrating like a plucked string, adrenaline and leftover terror refusing to drain away.
Ethan's grip tightened fractionally, anchoring me. "Breathe," he said, quiet and steady. "In through your nose. Count to four."
I did. The air felt like broken glass going down, but I managed four counts. Hold. Then out through my mouth for four more. Ethan breathed with me, his chest rising and falling against my back in a rhythm my body gradually started to mirror.
Mason's thumb traced small circles over my pulse point, and I focused on that sensation—the warmth, the pressure, the proof of contact. Alex's hand was still on my face, and after a moment he leaned in and pressed his forehead to mine, his eyes closing.
"That's it," he murmured. "Stay with us. Right here."
Slowly—agonizingly slowly—the panic started to recede. My heartbeat decelerated from sprint to jog, my breathing evened out, and the world stopped tilting quite so violently on its axis. The shapes in the dark resolved into familiar furniture, and I remembered: I was in my own bedroom. I was in my own apartment. I was safe.
Except I wasn't, was I? My father was out there. He knew where I worked. He had my money. And unless I gave him more—unless I kept giving him more—he was going to hurt my mother. Or me. Or both of us.
The thought made my chest constrict again, and I squeezed Mason's hand harder than I meant to. He didn't flinch, just held on tighter.
"What time is it?" My voice came out scraped raw, like I'd been screaming. Maybe I had been.
"A little past two," Ethan said. His arms were still locked around me, and I could feel the tension in his muscles—not restraint, exactly, but barely contained energy. Like if he let go, he'd fly apart. "You've only been asleep for a couple hours."
I blinked at that, my sluggish brain trying to process the timeline. I had come home. They had seen my face. They had asked questions I couldn't answer. I had broken down. And then... then what? I didn't actually remember falling asleep. I just remembered crying until I ran out of tears and feeling like I was going to suffocate under the weight of everything I couldn't say.
But if I'd only been asleep for a couple hours, that meant—
I shifted slightly, registering for the first time that none of them were in their usual sleepwear. Ethan was still in the button-down and slacks he must have been wearing when he came back from his trip. Alex's shirt was wrinkled, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. Mason was in the same jeans and T-shirt he'd had on earlier, back when I walked through the door and everything imploded.
"You're all still dressed," I said, the words coming out flat with exhaustion. "You didn't—did you even try to go to bed?"
"No." Alex's answer was immediate and uncompromising. He pulled back just enough to meet my eyes, his expression carved from stone in the dim light. "We weren't going to leave you alone."
"Not a chance in hell," Ethan added, and there was something fierce in his tone that made my throat tighten.
Mason shifted closer, his knee pressing against the mattress. "We needed to be here. In case you—" He swallowed. "In case you needed us."
The statement hung in the air, simple and devastating. My chest ached with something too big to name—gratitude, maybe, or disbelief, or the sharp, unfamiliar sting of being seen. Being cared for. Being protected not as an obligation but as a choice they had made without hesitation.