Page 260 of The Rules
Nothing more. Nothing less.
Chapter 55
Katherine
The morning was merciless.
Gray light crept across the sky like something diseased, slow and joyless. The wind knifed through Katherine’s coat, slicing across her skin with clinical indifference. She felt the cold—knew it was there—but it didn’t matter. Everything in her body was holding itself still for something else.
They’d been outside the gates for… she didn’t know. Minutes. Hours. Time no longer behaved. It stretched until her breath felt trapped in her throat, then snapped forward with no warning, disorienting and cruel.
The four of them stood in silence. Not side by side—aligned but fragmented, as if anything more coordinated might shatter the spell they were under. Lisa fidgeted once. Bianca kept her hands buried in her coat. Katherine didn’t move at all.
Her fingers had gone stiff, locked into fists so tight her knuckles ached, but she refused to uncurl them. Control was physical now.
No one spoke.
Even the wind seemed to pull back.
Ben stood beside her, heat radiating from him like coiled tension wrapped in cloth and skin. He didn’t speak. Didn’t reach. Just stayed—anchored, solid. Every inch of him hummed with restraint. He was thereifshe needed him, and because she hadn’t turned, he didn’t offer.
But she felt him.
The way his shoulder shifted infinitesimally closer before stopping short. The weight of his gaze skimming her face when he thought she wouldn’t notice. The way the space between them buzzed—not from fear, but from shared purpose.
Then—
A sound like something ancient and rustedcoming back to life.
The groan of metal. Chains pulling. A low mechanical clatter that sliced through the silence like a bone saw.
The gates began to move.
Slow. Reluctant. Like the very building regretted letting go of what it had kept locked inside.
Katherine’s heart kicked once, hard and sharp, then held.
A flood of sensation surged through her—heat and static and pressure behind her eyes. She couldn’t breathe properly.
Her vision tunneled. The rest of the world fell away.
And then—he was there.
Her father.
Stepping into daylight like it didn’t belong to him yet.
His movements were cautious, unsure—like someone afraid the air might lie.
Katherine didn’t run.
She stood, every nerve pulled taut, watching him cross the threshold like it meant something sacred. Her throat tightened, but not from grief. From knowing.
From the weight of everything it took to make this moment real.
She watched her father emerge through the gates, her heart hammering against her ribs. He looked... older. Thinner.
The prison had hollowed him out, carved away pieces of him she wasn't sure would ever grow back. His hair was longer now, brushing against his collar in a way that seemed wrong on him—her father had always been meticulous about haircuts.
