Chapter 10: Choice
The words hung in the sunlit room, so reasonable, so utterly naive they made his teeth ache.
She tilted her head, her curls catching the morning light. “Derek is not an animal. I understand you know guys like him, but I’ve been with him for 2 years. I know when he’s too scared to pull anything stupid.”
Craig just looked at her. For a long, silent moment, he said nothing. The chill that had started in his chest when he read Marco’s texts now spread through his veins, turning his earlier warmth to ice. He saw the certainty in her blue eyes, the stubborn set of her shoulders. She believed it. She honestly believed she could predict the man who’d locked her in a closet based on his pattern.
A low, humorless sound escaped him. He turned away from her, walking to the small window overlooking the cracked sidewalk. He planted his hands on the sill, the peeling paint gritty under his palms. He focused on his breathing, on the steady in and out, fighting the urge to smash his fist through the glass.
“That’s what scares me the most, sweetheart,” he said finally, his voice dangerously calm. “You think you know. You’ve memorized the script so well you’re waiting for his next line. But last night wasn’t in the script, was it? Showing up here, drunk, at three in the morning? That was off-book. And men like him, when they go off-book…” He pushed off the sill and turned to face her. “They don’t just snap back to the program. They rewrite it. With worse consequences.”
With worse consequences.”
She looked at him, and the reasonable concern in her eyes hardened into something else—a flinty recognition. Her arms tightened across her chest. The morning sun highlighted the faint dusting of freckles over her nose, but her expression was all sharp angles and shadow.
“So I don’t get a say?” she asked, her voice dropping, losing all its softness. “You’re just going to force me to leave with you.” She took a step back, putting the width of her rumpled bed between them. Her gaze swept over him, from his untied shoes to the set of his jaw. “You should go.”
The words landed like a physical blow, knocking the air from his lungs. He actually took a half-step back, as if pushed. He’d been called plenty of things—asshole, player, addict—but never this. Never the thing he was trying so desperately not to be for her. The parallel was so ugly, so horrifically obvious, it left him speechless.
He just stood there, staring at her. The apartment felt suddenly too bright, the cheerful posters on the walls now mocking him. He’d marched in here with a plan, with lists and cars and a burner phone, thinking he was the solution. He’d only succeeded in painting himself with the same brush as the man he wanted to destroy.
“Force you,” he repeated, the words tasting like ash. His hands flexed at his sides, empty. All his predatory charm, his practiced persuasion, evaporated. All he had left was the raw, inconvenient truth. “Is that what you think this is?”
“What else would you call it?” Her voice wavered, but her chin stayed lifted. “You’re making decisions. You’re telling me what’s going to happen. You’re not asking.”
“Asking?” A hollow laugh escaped him. He ran a hand through his hair, tugging at the roots. “Okay.Fine. Mya, will you please consider temporarily relocating so the man who treats you like a pet he can lock away doesn’t do something even dumber and more permanent? There. I asked.”
“And if I say no?”
He met her stare, the fight draining out of him, leaving only a cold, stark fear. “Then I stay here. On that stupid air mattress. Or in my car outside. Because I’m not leaving you alone with that threat hanging over you.” He shrugged, a gesture of sheer helplessness. “That’s not a threat, sweetheart. That’s just a fact.”
That’s just a fact.”
She didn’t speak for a long moment. The morning traffic sounds from the street below filled the silence, a normal world continuing on outside this suspended bubble of fear and argument. Her eyes, that clear, intelligent blue, tracked over his face as if reading lines in a book she suddenly understood.
He watched her throat work as she swallowed. The defiant set of her shoulders loosened, not in surrender, but in a kind of grim acceptance. Her gaze dropped to the floorboards between them, then lifted to meet his again, and what he saw there wasn’t anger anymore. It was a weary, painful clarity.
She nodded, once. A short, sharp movement.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice quiet but perfectly clear. “And given my history, you can see why I struggle to see the difference between the two.” She took a slow breath, her fingers twisting in the fabric of her shirt. “But I’m learning. And I’d really like you to go right now.”
The words didn’t hit him like a blow this time. They settled in, cold and final, like a lock clicking shut. He’d shown her his hand—all his fear, his desperation, his need to control a situation that felt like it was spiraling. And she’d called him on it, using the exact same language she’d use for Derek.
The truth of it was a sour taste in his mouth. He’d become the other side of the same toxic coin.
“Okay,” he heard himself say. The word felt foreign. He never just said okay. He negotiated, he charmed, he bulldozed. He looked around the sunlit studio, at the deflated air mattress, at her chipped coffee mug on the kitchenette counter. This place had felt like a sanctuary last night. Now it just felt like a crime scene where he’d fucked up.
He moved mechanically. He found his shirt discarded on the floor near the bed and pulled it on, the fabric clinging unpleasantly to his skin. His wallet and keys were on her tiny desk, beside a stack of books with dense, mathematical titles. He pocketed them, the jingle of metal absurdly loud.
He didn’t look at her as he walked to the door. His hand paused on the deadbolt he’d thrown last night with such finality. He glanced back. She hadn’t moved from the center of the room. She stood in a patch of sun, arms wrapped around herself, looking younger than her twenty-three years and older all at once.
“The burner phone,” he said, his voice rough. “It’s in a black Audi behind my car. Keys are under the front left tire. The number for it is pre-programmed into my phone. Just… keep it charged.”
She gave another small, silent nod. Not a promise, just an acknowledgment that she’d heard him.
He unlocked the door and opened it. The hallway’s stale, recycled air washed in. He stepped over the threshold, then stopped, one hand braced on the doorframe. He didn’t turn around. “If anything, and I mean anything, feels off, you call that number. It doesn’t matter what time it is. It doesn’t matter if you think you’re overreacting.”
He waited. There was no response from behind him, just the quiet sound of her breathing.
He let go of the doorframe and walked out, pulling the door shut behind him with a soft, definitive click. He didn’t hear the deadbolt engage. He stood in the dim hallway for a five-count, then descended the narrow stairs, his footsteps echoing off the concrete walls.
The bright morning sun in the alley was a shock. He blinked, pulling his sunglasses from his shirt collar. His car, a low-slung Italian thing, was parked where he’d left it. The black Audi Marco had mentioned was tucked behind it, anonymous and clean. He crouched, felt under the tire’s cool rubber for the magnetic key case, and unlocked the Audi’s glove box. The cheap burner phone and a charger sat inside on top of the manual.
He took them out, walked back to Mya’s building’s outer door, and set the phone and charger on the dusty mat inside the vestibule. He texted Marco the new number. Leave it. Don’t ring the bell.
The reply was instant. That bad?
Craig didn’t answer. He got into his own car, the leather seat hot from the sun. The engine turned over with a predatory purr. He didn’t drive away. He pulled out of the alley and circled the block, parking half a street down with a clear view of her building’s entrance and the mouth of the alley. He killed the engine.
The silence in the car was total. He stared at the peeling brick facade, at her third-floor window. The curtains were still open. He saw a shadow pass by once, then nothing.
He was giving her space. He was respecting her wish. He was sitting in a hot car, useless, while every instinct in his body screamed that this was wrong, that she was vulnerable, that he’d just walked away from the most important thing he’d ever stumbled into.
His phone buzzed in the cup holder. He snatched it up, a stupid, hopeful jolt in his chest. It wasn’t her. It was a calendar reminder for a meeting with his father’s accountant tomorrow. A mundane piece of a life that now felt like it belonged to someone else.
He tossed the phone onto the passenger seat and leaned his head back against the headrest. He’d wait. He’d watch. He’d give her today. But the sick, coiled tension in his gut told him this wasn’t over. It was a stalemate, and in his world, stalemates never lasted.
It was a stalemate, and in his world, stalemates never lasted.
He’d been staring at the bricks of her building, watching sunlight crawl across the facade, for forty-seven minutes. The Audi hadn’t moved. Her curtain hadn’t twitched. His own phone had remained silent, a black slab of pure judgment on the passenger seat. He was debating a third loop around the block when the passenger door opened.
Marco slid in, bringing the scent of fresh asphalt and cheap diner coffee. He placed a full cardboard cup in the cup holder next to Craig’s silent phone.
“You look like hell,” Marco said, buckling his seatbelt with a casual click. “And you smell like regret and leather conditioner. It’s not a good combo.”
Craig didn’t turn his head. His eyes stayed fixed on the middle distance between her front door and the alley mouth. “What do you want, Marco?”
“Gave you an hour. You didn’t move. Figured you could use a patrol report.” Marco took a slow sip of his own coffee, following Craig’s line of sight. “So this is pathetic. I followed Derek home hours ago. He woke up at ten, got ready, went to a coffee shop by his house.”
Craig finally shifted, a flicker of dark attention. “And?”
“And he met a woman. Brunette, taller than your girl. I thought, ah, cousin. Family support.” Marco’s voice was flat, factual. “Then they walked out together. They made out in the alley next to the dumpster for a solid five minutes. His hands were everywhere. Hers were in his hair.”
The information landed, not with a shock, but with a cold, settling heaviness. Craig’s knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. The genuine, grieving apology Mya had predicted was already ashes. The script was burned.
“I think it’s safe to say someone has quickly moved on,” Marco finished, leaning back against the headrest. He turned to look at Craig, a familiar, cheeky gleam in his calm eyes. “Which means now you have to get Blondie to like you the old-fashioned way. No debt holding, no rival boyfriend in the picture. Just you, your stunning personality, and your profound inability to flirt with a woman who doesn’t automatically want to rip your clothes off.”
A harsh, silent laugh shook Craig’s shoulders. The irony was a physical pressure in his chest. The one obstacle he’d thought was solid had evaporated in a cloud of alleyway desperation, leaving the real, terrifying field wide open.
“She kicked me out,” Craig said, the words scraped raw. “Told me to go. Said I was making decisions for her, just like he did.”
Marco whistled low. “Ouch. She’s not wrong, technically. Your pitch was basically ‘come to my secret safe house or I’ll live in my car outside your door.’ It’s possessive, man. It’s a vibe.”
“I know what it is,” Craig snapped, finally tearing his gaze from the building. He looked at his friend, his usual smirk nowhere in sight. “So what’s the old-fashioned way, genius? Flowers? Chocolate? A heartfelt apology for being a controlling asshole, which will just remind her of the last controlling asshole?”
“Start by not being an asshole, maybe.” Marco shrugged, gesturing with his coffee cup. “The guy she’s been comparing you to just proved he’s a hypocrite and a dog. The bar is in hell. You could trip over it. But you’ve gotta stop trying to handle her. You can’t manage a person into liking you.”
The truth of it was embarrassingly simple. He’d approached her like a problem to be solved—a security detail, a logistics puzzle. He’d barged in with plans and burners while she was still picking shards of her old life out of her skin.
He looked back at the silent window. The burner phone was probably still sitting in the vestibule, a cheap piece of plastic full of his fear. He’d left it as a tether, but it was just another chain, another man trying to install his own line into her life.
“She thinks she knows his patterns,” Craig muttered, more to himself than to Marco. “She was waiting for the sad act.”
“Well, the act’s over. The play’s a different one now.” Marco finished his coffee, crumpling the cup. “So what’s your move? Sit here all day smelling up your nice car? Or actually talk to her, without a five-point plan?”
Craig watched a delivery van double-park, blocking his view for a moment. When it pulled away, the street was unchanged. The stalemate was still there, but the board had just been wiped clean. Derek was a non-issue. The threat was diminished, but so was Craig’s last excuse for his own heavy-handedness.
He started the car, the engine’s growl splitting the quiet. He pulled away from the curb, not circling the block this time, but heading toward the main artery of the city.
“Where are we going?” Marco asked, eyebrows raised.
“To get food. The good kind. And then you’re going to drop me back there with it.” Craig’s mind was clicking forward, not with a plan to manage her, but with a single, stupidly simple objective. “And then you’re going to leave. For real.”
“Ah,” Marco said, a slow smile spreading. “The old ‘I come bearing gourmet sandwiches’ maneuver. Bold. Unarmed. Potentially humiliating.”
“Yeah,” Craig said, his grip on the wheel relaxing for the first time all morning. The tension was still there, coiled deep, but it had changed direction. It was no longer about containing a threat. It was about facing a rejection he might truly deserve, with nothing in his hands but a bag of food and an apology that had to be real.
The momentum had finally, terrifyingly, shifted back to her.
The momentum had finally, terrifyingly, shifted back to her.
Craig pointed the car toward the upscale market across town, driving in a tense silence that Marco wisely didn’t break. The scent of sun-warmed leather and Marco’s diner coffee filled the space. Craig’s mind replayed the morning on a vicious loop—her flinty stare, the way she’d stepped back behind the bed as if it were a barricade, the devastating accuracy of her words.
“She’s smarter than both of us put together,” Craig said, not looking away from the traffic light turning green.
“Obviously,” Marco replied, tapping his fingers against the window frame. “She saw right through your white knight bullshit. It’s kinda refreshing to watch, actually. Like a nature documentary.”
Craig shot him a glare, but there was no heat in it. The fight had drained out of him, leaving behind a hollowed-out clarity. He parked haphazardly in the market lot, ignoring the designated lines. He moved through the gleaming aisles with a focused intensity, grabbing things he remembered from her tiny kitchen—the oat milk she used, the specific brand of loose-leaf tea, a container of strawberries. He added gourmet sandwiches, a still-warm baguette, and two slices of decadent flourless chocolate cake.
“This is a very elaborate ‘I’m sorry for being a dick’ basket,” Marco observed, loading the bags into the backseat.
“It’s not a basket. It’s food,” Craig muttered, sliding back behind the wheel. His phone, silent on the console, felt like a watched pot. Every minute it didn’t vibrate was a confirmation of his failure.
Marco directed him to a boutique florist a few blocks over. “Just pull over.”
“No flowers. Flowers are a trope. Flowers are what Derek would send after he fucked up.”
“Not these,” Marco said, already getting out. He returned five minutes later with a single, squat potted plant. It had thick, dark green leaves and one curious, perfect white bloom that looked like folded porcelain. “It’s an orchid. It’s not romantic. It’s structural. It’s a thing that needs care and specific conditions to not die. She’ll appreciate the complexity.”
Craig stared at the plant, then at Marco. “Since when are you a botanist?”
“Since I started dating that landscape architect who dumped me for having the emotional range of a teaspoon.” Marco placed the orchid carefully on the floor of the backseat. “It’s a callback. She likes systems, right? Equations. This is a living system. Now drive.”
When they pulled up near her building again, the street was unchanged. The Audi was still there. Craig killed the engine, the sudden quiet pressing in on him. He looked at the bags of food, then at the orchid.
“Just the food,” he decided, his voice low. “The plant is… a lot.”
“Your funeral,” Marco shrugged. He clapped Craig on the shoulder once, a solid, grounding weight. “Remember. Trip over the bar. It’s on the floor.”
Craig got out, laden with bags. He didn’t look back as Marco slid into the driver’s seat and pulled away, the car disappearing around the corner. He was alone on the sidewalk. The sun was higher now, hot on the back of his neck. He walked to the outer door of her building and saw the empty space on the vestibule mat. The burner phone and charger were gone.
A faint, tentative thread of relief loosened something in his chest. She’d taken it. She hadn’t left it sitting there as a rejection.
He headed up the stairs, his footsteps slower this time. At her door, he stood for a full minute, just listening. No sound came from within. He balanced the bags in one arm and knocked—three quiet, deliberate raps on the wood.
He waited. Silence.
He knocked again, a little firmer. “Mya? It’s Craig. I come bearing overpriced sandwiches and a severe lack of a five-point plan.”
More silence. He leaned his forehead against the cool paint of the door. He’d blown it. She wasn’t going to answer. He’d have to leave the bags here and go back to the terrible limbo of his car. He was about to set them down when he heard the soft, metallic slide of the deadbolt.
The door opened just a crack, the security chain still engaged. One blue eye peered out through the gap, framed by the blonde of her curls. She looked exhausted.
“Hi,” she said, her voice quiet.
“Hey.” He hefted the bags slightly. “I brought food. As a peace offering. And an admission that my previous presentation was condescending and shitty.”
She stared at him for a long moment. The eye blinked. Then the door closed. His heart sank. But he heard the chain rattle, and then the door opened fully.
She stood there, wearing the same soft gray shirt and pajama shorts from the morning. Her feet were bare on the wooden floor. She’d been crying; the evidence was faint but there in the slight puffiness around her eyes. She didn’t smile, but she stepped back, granting him entry.
He walked in, the familiarity of her space washing over him—the lavender, the books, the lingering tension. He went to the kitchenette and started unpacking the bags, giving her space, giving himself something to do with his hands. He put the oat milk in her tiny fridge, found a plate for the sandwiches.
“You didn’t have to do all this,” she said from behind him. She hadn’t moved from near the door.
“I know.” He didn’t turn around. He focused on arranging the food, which suddenly felt stupid and excessive. “I wanted to. Consider it an apology in carbohydrate form.”
He finally turned. She was watching him, her arms crossed again, but not in defiance this time. It looked more like she was holding herself together. The sunlight cut across the floor between them, a bright, separating line.
“I’m not good at this,” he said, the admission rough. “The not-being-in-control part. The waiting part. It makes me impulsive. It makes me act like an ass. And when I see a threat to someone I…” He trailed off, the word ‘care about’ sticking in his throat. It was too big, too soon. “To you,” he finished, lamely.
She nodded slowly, absorbing this. Her gaze drifted to the window, to the bright day outside that felt completely disconnected from the heavy air in the room. “When you left, I just sat on the floor for an hour,” she said, her voice almost conversational. “I kept waiting to feel relieved. Or free. Or even just sad. But I just felt… numb. And then really stupid.”
“Why stupid?” He kept his voice gentle, neutral.
“Because you were right.” She looked back at him, and her expression was so openly vulnerable it clenched something in his gut. “About the patterns. I was sitting there braced for his sad call, for the weeping apology, planning how I’d finally be strong and say no. And the whole time…” A humorless, choked sound escaped her. “The whole time, according to your friend, he was probably sticking his tongue down some other woman’s throat in an alley. So my big moment of strength was a fiction. A script for a play he wasn’t even performing.”
He had no words for that. There was no consolation that wouldn’t sound hollow. So he just said, “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged, a small, broken movement. “It’s not your fault he’s a hypocrite. It just makes me feel like the world’s slowest learner.” She uncrossed her arms, wrapping them around her waist instead. “And then I was angry at you for being right. And for leaving when I told you to. Which is insane.”
“It’s not insane.” He took a single step toward her, stopping when she didn’t retreat. “It’s human. You set a boundary. I respected it. That’s supposed to happen.”
“It’s never happened before,” she whispered.
The simple truth of it hung in the air, more damning than any description of locked closets. He saw the confusion in her eyes, the utter unfamiliarity with a man who actually listened when she said ‘go’. He’d spent his life exploiting blurred lines, and here, in respecting one, he’d done something revolutionary in her world.
His phone, still in his back pocket, vibrated.
The sound was intrusive, a jarring electronic buzz in the quiet room. He flinched, instinctively reaching for it. It wasn’t his regular phone; it was the burner. The one he’d left for her. The one currently in her apartment.
He froze, his hand halfway to his pocket. His eyes snapped to hers.
Her own gaze had dropped to the floor, a deep flush spreading up her neck and across her cheeks. She bit her lower lip.
Slowly, Craig pulled the phone out. The screen glowed with a simple text notification from the new number. He opened it.Mya: I didn’t mean to snap like that. I’m sorrHe read the seven words twice. The tight, frantic knot that had been living in his chest since he walked out that morning finally, completely, unraveled. The apology wasn’t for Derek. It was for him. She was talking to him.
He looked back up at her. She was still staring at the floor, looking profoundly embarrassed, as if she’d revealed too much.
He didn’t text back. He put the phone down on the kitchen counter with a soft click. He closed the distance between them in three strides, stopping just short of touching her. He could smell her lavender shampoo, see the individual flecks of gold in the blue of her wary, upturned eyes.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he said, his voice low and certain. “Not for snapping. Not for protecting your space. Not for one damn thing, sweetheart.”
A single tear escaped, tracking a clean line down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away. “The food smells good,” she said, her voice thick.
“It is good.” He reached out, slowly, giving her every chance to pull back. He tucked the stray curl behind her ear, his fingers lingering for a second on the soft skin of her jaw. “You should eat. And then, if you want, we can talk about what happens next. With you leading the conversation.”
She leaned into his touch, just barely, a silent affirmation. Then she nodded, swiping at the tear with the back of her hand. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. I’d like that.”
She turned and walked to the kitchenette, her bare feet whispering against the floorboards. She picked up a sandwich, examining it, a small, genuine smile finally touching her lips. “You even got the kind with the weird grainy mustard I like. That’s… scarily observant.”
He leaned against the counter, watching her, the warmth seeping back into the room. “I pay attention,” he said.
For the first time all day, he believed she might actually believe him.