Page 100 of Only Mine
Saint flicks through the phone, scrolling, reading. Every few seconds, his thumb pauses, the muscle in his jaw ticking like a bomb. I want to tell him to stop, that there’s no point, that it will only make it worse. But the pleas are stuck somewhere behind my teeth.
“He’s not supposed to have any access to the internet,” I say with a shaking voice. “He shouldn’t even be able to comment, let alone create new accounts.”
Saint’s eyes snap to mine. “When’s the last time you checked your DMs?”
“I … I don’t. My agent screens them.” The confession tastes like blood. I’ve been hiding behind Brenda and the buffer of two different social media managers for a few weeks now.
“It’s not just the comments,” Saint mutters.
My hands shake just thinking about what he might’ve uncovered. There are videos saved on my account, ones held as potential evidence instead of deleted. I wonder if Saints found the video that was sent to me by my attacker, which included a still frame of my own face in the preview. Not a recent one. It was a screen grab from a year ago, taken from a live Q&A I did for a lipstick launch. My mouth is open mid-sentence. My hair is platinum then, no pink, just wild and loose.
The video was silent. It’s me, looking into the camera, smiling and talking, but with the sound removed. The effect is eerie, like watching a puppet version of myself. A steady, slow zoom closes in on my lipsticked mouth. Then, abruptly, the video cuts to a photograph of my face, my mouth circled in red:love how your mouth trembles when you don’t know what to say.
Saint’s thumb moves with fast swipes, opening apps, switching screens. He’s logged out of my Instagram and locked my phone before I can even see what he’s doing.
“Why are you still on this fucking thing?”
He sets the phone on the table with the screen facing down.
“My therapist calls it controlled exposure. I’m sorry,” I say again, voice scraped raw. “I didn’t mean to ruin dinner.”
Saint makes a noise that’s almost a laugh, but there’s nothing amused in it. “You didn’t ruin anything. You did scare the shit out of me, though.”
He’s close enough now that I spot a faint nick on his chin from a razor, the fluttering pulse in his throat.
I want to crawl under the stainless steel and never come out. Instead, I reach for my phone, but Saint beats me to it, holding it out of reach.
“Abso-fucking-lutely not,” he says, voice like a slammed door.
“I’m not a child,” I snap, and immediately regret how shrill I sound. “Give it back.”
“You’re not thinking straight.”
“Neither are you. You can’t take away my phone like I’m your rebellious daughter?—”
“I don’t care about your goddamn phone. I care aboutyou.”
He’s so matter-of-fact that I almost laugh, but my body isstill fighting for air. The adrenaline comes in aftershocks, waves that leave me limp. Saint softens, just a fraction. He sits beside me on the prep table, forearms across his knees.
“Did you know,” he says, “that every time Ivy so much as coughs, I lose two years off my life? That when she fell off the monkey bars and split her chin last year, I nearly threw up on the playground?”
I shake my head.
“I’ve never been so scared,” he says, “as I was when I got that call from the school today. Unless you count the ten minutes just now, standing outside that bathroom, listening to you not be able to breathe.”
I want to tell him that my panic attacks aren’t voluntary. That he can’t possibly understand what it’s like to live in a body that betrays you every time you think you’re safe. Maybe he does, in his own way. Maybe that’s why I can’t stop coming back to him, why I crave the cold burn of his attention like a drug I know is going to kill me.
But for the first time since coming to Falcon Haven, I’m not thinking about the next panic attack or how to apologize for my existence. I’m just listening.
Saint rubs his palms together, the friction loud in the hush. “I’m intense. I know I am. But I’m not going to let this happen to you again. Not here, not ever.”
He’s silent for a long time, and I don’t dare break it. The kitchen beyond the walk-in is a muted roar, the world’s volume dialed down to just the two of us and the thump of my heartbeat in my ears. He stares at the wall for so long I wonder if I’ve broken him.
“My wife died because I chose work over her,” he says quietly. “Did you know that?”
I can only shake my head again.
“Celine used to do this thing. She’d get anxious aboutdumb shit, like whether she left the iron plugged in or if Ivy’s pajamas were warm enough. I’d listen, but I never actually heard her. Not really. I was always thinking about work, about the next menu, the next step.” He scrapes a hand over his face. “One night, she called, asked if I could pick her up from some charity event. I said no. Too busy. Told her to call a car or drive herself. She never made it home. Black ice, two miles from the house.”
