She had never told him her name.
She tried to scream it. He knew your name! Ask him how he knew!
But her mouth wouldn't open, and her voice wouldn't come, and the girl only smiled up at him with her heart in her eyes.
The bakery dissolved.
Now there was a street and a black umbrella held high above two people. The rain was loud on the pavement. A single streetlamp buzzed at the corner.
Riley was nineteen and shivering, and the man had wrapped his coat around her shoulders.
"You're not like them," he said quietly.
Older Riley closed her eyes. Even now, all these years later, those words hit the softest part of her.
You're not like them. That single sentence had undone everything her mother had built into her. The rules. The caution.
The habit of being afraid.
"Like who?" the girl whispered.
"Everyone who's ever put you in a cage and called it a home."
Her breath caught. No one had ever said that. No one had ever dared.
