Chapter 56 Leo
I was halfway through cross‑referencing ward fluctuations against the outer fabric readings when the scream cut through the house.
It was sharp. Raw. Not startled. Not annoyed. Not a curse or a muttered complaint.
It was fear.
Kristen’s voice split the air like something had torn straight through it, and every instinct in me detonated at once. My chair scraped violently across the floor as I shoved back from the desk, heart slamming hard enough that it drowned out every other sound. I did not stop to think. I did not reach for a weapon. I did not pause to evaluate threat vectors or containment protocols or anything that usually defined my reactions.
I ran.
Down the hall, breath already tight, boots pounding against wood, the world narrowing to the single closed door at the end. I reached it and didn’t knock. I didn’t even slow down. I shoved it open hard enough that it smacked against the wall with a hollow crack that echoed through the room.
Steam curled thick in the air, blurring everything for a half second before my eyes adjusted.
And then I froze.
Kristen stood there, just inside the room, water still clinging to her skin, the remnants of heat and steam hanging around her like a second atmosphere. Her hair was damp, clinging to her shoulders and back, her posture rigid with shock as she turned toward me. The towel lay on the floor where it had slipped, half‑caught under the edge of the bed frame.
For a fraction of a second, my brain refused to process the image as a whole. I registered it in fragments instead. The way she had gone completely still. The way the air between us felt suddenly too tight. The way my own breath caught so sharply it hurt.
Then everything slammed into place at once.
I turned my head away immediately, jaw locking so hard it ached, eyes fixing on the far wall like it was the only thing holding the room together. Heat flared behind my eyes that had nothing to do with the steam. My pulse hammered, furious and confused, adrenaline tangled with something far more dangerous.
“I heard you scream,” I said, too fast, too clipped, as if speed could erase the fact that I had barged into her room without permission.
She did not answer right away.
Then her voice came, sharp and furious and shaking just enough to betray the fear underneath it. “What the hell are you doing in here?”
“I told you,” I snapped, not turning back, fists clenched at my sides. “You screamed.”
“So you break into my room?” she shot back. “That’s your logic now?”
“You think I’m supposed to ignore it?” I fired. “Pretend I didn’t hear you? Pretend I didn’t recognize your voice?”
“This is my house too,” she said. “My room. My space. You don’t get to just storm in whenever you feel like it.”
“I wasn’t feeling anything,” I said harshly. “I reacted.”
“Yeah,” she said, voice biting. “That’s the problem. You always react. You never ask.”
Her words cut deeper than they should have, because they were not just about the door or the scream or the steam still clinging to the walls. They were about the safe house, the watchful silences, the way I lingered too close without ever explaining why. They were about every line I had crossed quietly, telling myself it was necessary.
“You want privacy?” I said, finally turning just enough to meet her eyes without letting my gaze drop. “Then stop putting yourself in situations where I have to run toward danger instead of away from it.”
Her laugh was short and humorless. “That’s rich. You’re the one who moved in without asking.”
“To protect you,” I shot back.
“You hover,” she said. “You watch. You control. And you never tell me anything.”
“I don’t tell you because you don’t understand what you’re standing in the middle of,” I said, voice low and tight. “You think this is about boundaries and privacy and who gets to open which door. It’s about whether you wake up tomorrow.”
She stared at me, eyes blazing, something wounded and furious and defiant twisting together behind them. “And you think that gives you the right to decide everything for me?”
Silence stretched between us like a wire pulled too tight.
Then she said it.
Slowly. Deliberately. Not shouting this time. Not flinching.
“Is that really why you’re here?”
My breath stalled.
“Is that why you moved in?” she continued, taking a step closer. Not timid. Not cautious. Challenging. “Because you’re protecting me?”
I didn’t answer.
Steam drifted between us in lazy spirals, but the air itself felt electric now, alive with something neither of us was naming. She stopped just a few feet from me, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off her skin without looking.
Her voice dropped. Sharper now. Controlled. “Or is it because you don’t trust yourself to stay away?”
I clenched my jaw so hard I tasted metal.
She reached down for the towel then, fingers brushing the edge of it where it lay on the floor. The movement was slow. Intentional. And somehow far louder than any scream she could have made.
“Kristen,” I said, her name a warning, not a command.
She paused, straightened, and met my eyes fully.
Then she let it fall from her hand.
Not dramatically. Not for spectacle. Just letting it drop, like the question it carried with it had more weight than the fabric ever could.
“Is this what you want to see?”
And in that moment, every line I had drawn, every boundary I had told myself I was keeping intact, cracked under the weight of the truth I had been refusing to face.