Nowhere to run

*Alexandria's POV

I heard him say it.

Then I heard it again inside my head, slower, the way your brain does when it receives something it needs extra time to process.

*Then I'll make sure you have nowhere to go. And I'll hate myself for it.*

He said it like a confession and a threat in the same breath and somehow that was the most Jamie thing he had ever done. Even now, in the middle of something that should have cracked him open, he was still controlling the terms. Still making sure he had the upper hand before he allowed himself to be vulnerable. The vulnerability and the weapon, delivered together, so I couldn't hold one without the other.

I turned away from him and walked to the window.

The garden was out there, the same garden where I had collapsed two days ago, where the grass still had a faint dark patch near the jasmine that Elaine hadn't gotten to yet. I stared at it and tried to think clearly but my thoughts kept slipping. I was pregnant. I was exhausted. I was standing in a kitchen with a man who had just told me he'd been dismantling my escape for over a year and somehow framed it as devotion.

"Alexandria."

"Don't." I put a hand up without turning around. "Just — give me a minute."

He went quiet. I heard him move, heard the stool shift, and then nothing. He was giving me the minute. That was new.

I pressed my fingers against the window glass. Cool and solid.

Okay. Think.

Kendrick's company was gone. That was real. Which meant my articles, my income, the small carefully constructed professional identity I had built for myself under a different name — all of it sat in Jamie's hands now whether Kendrick knew it or not. The account was blown too. He'd known about it for fourteen months and hadn't touched it, which was somehow more frightening than if he had. He'd let me save. Let me plan. Let me feel like I had something real, while knowing exactly how much rope he was giving me.

My passport was still in the suitcase by the front door.

The cash was still there too.

But where was I going to go with cash and a passport if every person I trusted had already been accounted for?

I turned around.

He was sitting at the island again, watching me. Not impatiently. Not with that cold evaluating look I was used to. Just watching. And it occurred to me then that this was what he meant when he said he paid attention. Not the way a husband pays attention, noticing your new haircut or asking how a hard day went. The way a person watches something they're afraid of losing. Quiet. Constant. From a distance that keeps them safe.

"Who else," I said.

He tilted his head slightly.

"Who else did you get to? Besides Kendrick." I crossed my arms. "My account. His company. What else?"

A pause. "I had someone monitoring your burner phone."

My stomach dropped.

"Not listening to calls," he added quickly, like that was the part that would comfort me. "Just — activity. Contacts. Frequency."

"So you know everything."

"Most things."

I laughed then. It came out wrong, too high, too sharp. "Most things. Right. My husband knows most things about my private life that I never told him." I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth for a second. "Jamie, do you hear yourself? Do you hear what you're describing?"

"I hear it."

"And?"

"And I'm not apologizing for it." He stood up, slowly, and when he spoke again his voice was lower. Less controlled than his words were. "I know how it sounds. I know what it looks like from where you're standing. But I need you to hear me say something and actually listen to it, not just file it away as another thing I've done wrong."

I said nothing. Which he took as permission.

"I have never been able to function right when you weren't there." He said it like he was pulling it out of somewhere it had been stuck for a very long time. "Since high school. Since you used to sit two rows ahead of me in chemistry and you'd turn around to pass back papers and you never once looked at me like I was something to impress." He stopped. Jaw tight. "Everyone looked at me like I was something to impress. You looked at me like I was a person who needed to get his work done."

I stared at him. My chest hurt.

"That doesn't justify any of this," I said.

"I know it doesn't."

"You've been controlling me since high school, Jamie. You molded me into something that fit your life and called it marriage."

"I know."

"Stop agreeing with me," I snapped, because his agreement was making it harder and he needed to stop. "Stop standing there admitting everything like that fixes it. It doesn't fix it. I was in a hospital bed alone two days ago. I have been invisible in this house for five years. You can't just—" My voice broke properly this time and I stopped and swallowed hard and looked at the ceiling for a second. "You don't get to decide you want to keep me right when I've finally decided to go."

"That's exactly when I decided it," he said quietly. "Because that's the only time it became real to me."

I hated that. I hated how honest it was. I hated that he was standing there looking like he meant every word and I had spent so long loving him that my body still responded to his honesty like it was water after years of drought.

But I was pregnant. And he didn't know. And if he knew—

I couldn't think about that right now.

"I need to go upstairs," I said.

"Alexandria—"

"I'm not leaving." The words felt strange in my mouth, like a temporary surrender I wasn't fully agreeing to. "I just need to think. Somewhere that isn't this kitchen with you looking at me like that."

"Like what?"

I picked up my mug just to have something to do with my hands. "Like I'm something you're afraid of losing."

He didn't deny it.

I carried the mug upstairs, my suitcase still sitting untouched by the front door, and I locked myself in the guest room and sat on the edge of the bed and pressed both hands flat against my stomach.

The baby had no idea.

I almost envied it.