Danger knocks

Chapter 10

*LIA*

The cops arrived just after eight, No sirens, no hurry. Only the sound of boots on the porch.

Rubben opened the door before they could knock. knuckles wrapped in tape gone rust-brown. The gun wasn’t on him, but I knew exactly where it was. Top drawer, nightstand, next to the gray shirt I’d taken.

“Mr. Carter.” The detective looked older, my he was in his mid fifties , coffee steaming in a paper cup. “We’re here about the 911 call.”

Rubben didn’t step back. Didn’t invite them in. His body filled the doorway like a door himself. “No forced entry.”

“Mind if we look around?”

“Yeah. Sure ."

The younger officer shifted, hand going to his belt on instinct. Rubben saw it and didn’t care.

I moved beside him. Arms crossed over his shirt, the hem reaching my thighs. It still smelled like him, like the floor of his room last night, like fear and cedar.

“It was probably me,” I said, and my voice didn’t shake. That surprised me more than anything. “Long day. I might have left the back door unlocked.”

The detective’s gaze dragged from me to Rubben to the blood on his tape,. “You two alone here?”

“Parents are in Vegas,” Rubben said. “Business.”

They had no idea, mom thought I was safe. Dad thought his house was untouchable. Neither of them knew we could be attacked.

The detective wrote something in a small notebook. “Anything missing?”

Rubben’s eyes cut to me for half a second. She smells like you, The ink on the back of that photo was still burned into my head.

“No,” he said.

“Any cameras?”

“Glitched.” Same word the hospital used when my tires were cut.

The detective sipped his coffee and studied us like we were a puzzle with missing pieces. “You get any more texts, calls, anything that feels off, you call us. Day or night.”

He held out a card. Rubben didn’t move. I took it.

They were gone by 8:21. No fingerprint dust, no questions that mattered. Just procedure. They left like they knew they wouldn’t find Marriott, because Marriot didn’t leave traces. He left messages.

Rubben exhaled for the first time since they arrived, his shoulders dropping an inch.

“You lied,” he said to the wood, not to me.

“So did you.”

He turned then, and really looked at me. At the shirt, at my bare legs, at the fact that I was standing wearing his clothes, lying to police for him. For us.

“Marriot was here,” he said. It wasn’t a question. It was the truth laid bare.

I nodded.

“He got in.”

Another nod. My throat was too tight for words.

Rubben dragged a hand through his hair. The tape pulled and a drop of blood fell to the floor between us. He didn’t notice. “He left that photo so I’d know he can. Anytime. Anywhere. That locks don’t matter.”

“Second piece,” I whispered. I’d heard him say it last night when he thought I was asleep, voice raw in the dark.

His head came up sharp. “You heard that?”

“I hear everything when it’s you.”

He closed his eyes like I’d hit him. Like honesty was a language he didn’t speak anymore.

I went to the kitchen because standing still felt like drowning. Made coffee. Two mugs. Black for him, no sugar, the way he drank it at 3 AM when he thought the house was empty.

We stood six feet apart. The space between us felt full of I’m inside of the photo, of the way his back looked last night, mapped with scars I wasn’t supposed to see.

“My dad called,” he said after a long time.

I waited, mug warm against my palms.

“Told me to send you away. To my mother’s old house. Upstate.”

The mug stopped halfway to my mouth. “Are you?”

He met my eyes over the rim of his. “No.”

One word. It settled in the kitchen like a vow and a curse at the same time.

I didn’t say thank you. Thank you didn’t belong here, not when the reason I was staying was because someone had marked me as the next Mrs. Marriot.

The coffee burned going down. I was grateful for the pain. It was simple.

“You’re not going to work,” he said. Not asking. Not suggesting.

“I have patients.”

“You have a target on you.”

“Then I’ll wear it at St. Mercy.”

His mug hit the counter too hard, coffee sloshed onto the marble. “Lia—”

“Don’t.” My voice came out harder than I meant. “You don’t get to lock me in a room, Rubben. Not after last night. Not after you said if you touch me right now, I won’t stop_ and then stopped anyway.”

His jaw locked. He turned to the window, to the yard, to anywhere that wasn’t my face and the truth in it.

“I can’t lose you,” he said to the glass, so quiet I almost missed it.

I didn’t have an answer for that. So I gave him silence.

He turned back eventually. “Promise me you won’t go.”

“Promise you won’t sleep on the floor with a gun under the pillow,” I shot back. “Promise you won’t go in the car tonight and sit in the dark like you’re waiting to bleed.”

Stalemate.

He walked past me into the living room and sat on the couch, head in his hands, tape dark with blood, shirtless still. His back was to me.

That was when I saw them. Not the scar by his ribs that Mara touched. Others. His back was a history of hurt I’d never been told. Thin white lines. A burn, long and cruel, like a knife dragged slow.

I’d never seen them because he never let me. Not until last night when the towel slipped and he forgot to care.

“How many,” I asked the space between us.

He didn’t turn. “Enough.”

“From him?”

“No. From after.”

After Mom. After the name Marriott on her lips while she bled. After his world ended at ten years old.

I moved to him but didn’t touch. Couldn’t. Not yet. “I’m not going to work today.”

His head came up. Surprised.

“But not because you told me not to,” I said. “Because if I go, you’ll follow. And if he sees you, he wins. And I’m tired of him winning.”

Rubben stood so fast the couch groaned. Too close now, close enough that I could see the water from his shower still clinging to his chest.

“Don’t do that,” he said, voice rough.

“Do what.”

“Think. For me. About me. Like you—”

He stopped. Couldn’t finish.

Like I loved him.

I did. God, I did.

He stepped back and ran a hand down his face, exhausted. “Stay in the house. Please.”

That word again. Please It undid me every time.

I nodded. For the scars. For the photo. For _I’m inside_.

*RUBBEN*

She stayed.

she called in sick, told Jen it was a migraine and hung up before Jen could ask more.

I checked the locks. Windows. Closets. Three times each. The house was clean, but it didn’t feel like it. Marriott had been here. That didn’t wash out.

Found her in my room at noon. Sitting on the bed in my gray shirt. She must have taken it last night while I was in the garage, while I was busy falling apart.

“You went in my closet.”

“You went in my room.”

Fair.

I sat on the floor with my back to the door. The gun wasn’t in the nightstand anymore. It was in my hand, weight familiar and wrong.

“How am I supposed to sleep,” she asked the air.

“You’re not. Not today.”

Silence stretched between us until she broke it. “When I was ten, I hid in the closet during storms. Mom would sit outside the door. She didn’t come in. Just talked. About nothing. About her day, about groceries, about the neighbor’s dog. Until I stopped shaking.”

“I’m not your mom, Lia.”

“I know. You’re worse. You make it worse. You make it so I can’t breathe unless you’re in the room.”

She was right.

She lay down facing the wall, giving me her back. Trusting me with it. Trusting me not to touch, not to ruin, not to become him.

I stayed on the floor. Eyes on the door. On the gun. On her breathing, fast at first, then slower, then almost even.

My phone buzzed. Dad.

Declined.

Buzzed again. Text. Pick up.

Didn’t.

Third time. _We need to talk about Marriott.

My thumb hovered.

Lia shifted in bed, made a small sound in her sleep. Scared, even there.

I turned the phone face down.

I wouldn’t tell him. Not yet. Saying Marriott out loud felt like lighting a match in a room full of gas. And Dad would take her if he knew how close Marriott was. Ship her to Vegas, to Upstate, anywhere but here. Anywhere but with me.

handle your family business, or I will. Mara’s voice from yesterday, sharp and certain.

Lia was my family business. In my shirt. In my room. In my house that wasn’t safe anymore.

At 3:47 PM, the doorbell rang.

I was on my feet, gun up, before the sound finished.

Lia sat up fast. “Rubben—”

“Stay here.”

Lia was behind me now. Saw the flowers. Saw my face and knew.

“Who are they from,” she asked, but we both knew.

Didn’t answer. Kicked the bundle off the porch. White petals scattered across the lawn like spilled bones. Like a promise.

She stepped outside. Bare feet on cold wood. Stood beside me.

“Rubben.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m scared.”

So was I.

So I did the only thing I could think of.

but I'm never letting anyone one hurt you

Two days left before her parents came home.

Two days before Marriott tried again.