Chapter 55

Chapter 55
It was the knock that woke me, not loud, but persistent. Three steady taps, then a pause. It wasn’t the kind of sound meant to scare. It was the kind meant to wake someone gently, but only because something worse waited behind it.
I wrapped the blanket tighter around me as I made my way to the front door, pulse quickening with every step. Dom stood on the other side, hands full and jaw locked in a way that sent a ripple through my chest.
“Sorry,” he said, nodding once. “Didn’t mean to wake you. But you need to see this.”
His tone was measured and calm, but underneath it was the same taut wire I’d heard the night he found the phone in my car.
He handed me a manila envelope. There was no return address, but my name was typed on the front in bold, sterile print.
I didn’t ask questions. I already knew this wasn’t a mistake or junk mail. My stomach dropped as I peeled it open and pulled out the contents—five photographs. Glossy. Cleanly printed. Not phone shots. Professional.
The first: Jackson and I on the porch. My head resting on his chest, his eyes closed like he trusted the quiet around us.
The second: us in the kitchen, blurred just slightly as I reached for a mug and laughed at something I didn’t even remember now.
The third: the couch. Nighttime. I was asleep in Jackson's lap. My hand curled near his chest. His thumb rested at my temple. We hadn’t known we were being watched.
The fourth was different.
It was Dom’s truck. The front driver’s side tire was sliced straight through. No note. No message. Just the image.
The fifth was a zoomed-in shot of my bedroom window, taken from behind the fence line. It made my skin crawl.
Dom exhaled slowly. “I found them in the mailbox this morning. Under that last one.”
I couldn’t speak. I held the photos like they were poison, glancing up only when the door opened again and Jackson stepped inside.
Dom had already texted him.

Jackson said nothing at first. He didn’t need to. His eyes scanned the photos laid out on the kitchen table, and his whole body stilled. No outburst. No demands.
But his hands curled into fists at his sides.
He stared for a long time at the photo of me sleeping.
Then he turned and walked through the house.
I watched him pace the perimeter twice, check the back gate, the camera batteries, and the locks. He pulled tools out of Dom’s truck, installed a third motion sensor, and replaced one of the lights that had flickered the night before. He didn’t look at me while he worked, but his silence was louder than most men’s fury.
Dom followed him once, muttering something low. Jackson didn’t respond. He just kept moving as if he didn’t, he might break.
When he finally came inside, he didn’t ask me if I was okay.
He just sat beside me, close enough for our legs to touch, and waited.

I spent the afternoon holding pieces of myself together with invisible thread.
Every moment felt heavier. The coffee tasted wrong. The floor creaked in places I hadn’t noticed before. And Jackson kept drifting around the edges like a silent storm cloud, never more than a room away, always watching.
I knew what it cost him to stay quiet. I saw it in the way his fingers tapped against the back of his neck when he thought I wasn’t paying attention.
“I’m not disappearing again,” I said finally, breaking the quiet that had settled between us like a fog. “He wants me to be afraid. I won’t give him that.”
Jackson looked over, jaw flexing. He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he reached forward and took my hand—gently, slowly, like the act itself was sacred.
“You don’t have to prove anything,” he said. “Not to me. Not to anyone.”
“I’m not. I just—I want this to stop defining me.”
“It doesn’t,” he said, voice thick. “It never could.”
But the way his eyes lingered on mine told me he understood. He said that he wasn’t trying to fix it; he was standing in it with me.

Later, after Dom left to file another report—useless, maybe, but necessary—I gathered the photographs and took them to the kitchen sink.
I didn’t want them in the trash. I didn’t want them folded in drawers or shoved into envelopes. I wanted them gone.
Jackson leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, saying nothing.
I pulled out the lighter we kept for candles and held the first image—the one of Jackson and me on the porch—over the metal basin. It caught quickly, its edges curling inward like a scream folding into silence.
One by one, I burned them.
Each flame was a reclamation.
Not a surrender. Not a defeat.
When the last photo vanished into gray ash, I stared down at the sink and whispered, “You don’t get to live on my walls.”
Jackson came up behind me and wrapped both arms around my waist. His chest to my back. His breath was near my ear.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured.
“I know,” I whispered. “But I’ve got me, too.”
Outside the kitchen window, the new motion light clicked on with a soft electric hum. The camera lens reflected the porch in soft red glows—evidence, protection, a line drawn in the dark.
We stood there a long time, wrapped in quiet defiance.
And I knew—this wasn’t over.
But I wasn’t broken.