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Chapter 731:

“Yes,” he admitted. “But it’s also true. I crossed a line. I know I crossed a line. And I’m trying—” he stepped back, giving her space, his hands raised in surrender, “—I’m trying to show you that I can learn. That I can respect boundaries, even when everything in me screams to ignore them p>

June looked at him. At the knife. At the mountain, the retreat, the absolute mess of a morning that had started with solitude and ended with two men claiming possession of her body, her attention, her future.

“Call me a car,” she said. “A real car. With a driver I don’t know and a destination I choose. And Crawford—” she met his eyes, letting him see the exhaustion, the absolute end of her capacity for performance, “—don’t follow me. Not today. Not tomorrow. Give me space. Real space. Or I swear to God, I will use every resource I have to destroy you. Not because I hate you. Because I need you to understand that no means no. Even from me. Especially from me p>

He held her gaze for a long moment. Then he nodded, pulled out his phone, and made the call.

The car arrived in twenty minutes—black, anonymous, the driver professional and incurious. June gave him Easton’s address and didn’t look back as the tires crunched on gravel, as the retreat center disappeared into the trees, as Crawford grew small in the rearview mirror and finally vanished.

She didn’t cry. She had trained herself out of crying years ago, had built walls so high that tears couldn’t climb them.

𝗗o𝗐𝘯l𝗈a𝗱 𝖯𝘋𝖥ѕ 𝗳𝘳еe on

But she wanted to. Wanted to scream, to break things, to release the pressure of a morning that had contained too much—too much need, too much claiming, too much of other people’s desire pressing against her until she couldn’t breathe.

The driver said nothing. She appreciated that. Appreciated the silence, the anonymity, the particular luxury of being nobody to someone for a little while.

Her phone buzzed. She ignored it. Buzzed again. Again.

She pulled it out, expecting Crawford—expecting threats or apologies or more of his absolute refusal to let her go.

Easton.

Where are you?

Are you safe?

Please. Just tell me you’re safe.

She stared at the screen, at the timestamps spreading across the hours she’d been on the mountain, the growing urgency, the final message from ten minutes ago: I’m coming to find you.

June typed with shaking thumbs: On my way to you. Be there in an hour. I’m okay. I’m safe.

The ellipsis appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

Okay. I’ll be here. Waiting.

She put the phone away and looked out the window as the Hudson Valley gave way to suburbs, to highways, to the particular gray of a day that had started with promise and ended in exhaustion.

The car pulled up to Easton’s building. She paid the driver—Crawford’s money, she realized, the bills he’d pressed into her hand before she left, the final insult of his refusal to let her be independent—and limped to the door on her swollen ankle, her body aching, her mind numb.

Easton was waiting. Of course he was. In the lobby, in street clothes, his hair uncombed, his eyes red-rimmed with sleeplessness.

“June p>