The mug was warm between my hands, but my fingers wouldn't stop trembling no matter how tightly I held it. My chest felt too tight, like there wasn't enough room for my lungs, like every breath had to fight its way in.
I wasn't supposed to feel like this.
Not anymore.
Not after everything I'd survived.
And yet… I did.
Cyrus sat across from me, silent but entirely present. He wasn't staring, not really, but I felt his attention wrap around me like a shield. Calm. Steady. Close enough that my instincts whispered I was safe.
The word felt foreign. Wrong. Dangerous.
Because another memory one I never invited slammed into me without warning.
I was eight. Maybe nine. It all blurs now. The stink of damp concrete filled my nose. My arms itched, phantom bruises blooming all over again. I remembered the cold, the dark, the way the door slammed shut behind me. The way I screamed until my throat burned.
And the voice.
"You're nothing. You'll never be anything. No one will care."
I had believed them. I had carried those words like they were carved into my bones.
And now here I was sitting in a warm, quiet room with someone looking at me like I mattered.
Like I wasn't nothing.
The contrast nearly split me open.
My grip on the coffee tightened so hard I thought I'd crack the ceramic. The memory faded, but the old, hollow ache remained. The one I'd learned to hide so well.
Cyrus noticed. Of course he did. He notices everything about me.
"Hey," he said, his voice low, steady. "You're okay. Just breathe with me."
I wanted to say I was fine. That I was in control. But my throat locked, and air stuttered in my chest.
Then Cyrus reached across the table not grabbing, not crowding me just far enough that our fingers brushed. Barely. A soft touch. A lifeline.
My breath hitched.
I hadn't let anyone touch me the way he touches me in years. Not without bracing for pain. Not without hearing the echo of that childhood voice warning me not to trust anyone.
But his touch didn't raise alarms.
It grounded me.
Anchored me.
I hated how much I needed it.
I loved how much it helped.
"I… I don't know why it still gets to me," I whispered. My own voice sounded small, like that scared little girl I never let out.
Cyrus's eyes softened, gentle in a way he rarely let anyone see. He didn't need me to tell him what i was talking about he understood. "Because it mattered," he said quietly. "What they did it mattered. And it shaped you. But it doesn't define you anymore."
Those words hit me harder than I expected. No pity. No judgment. Just truth.
My hands shook again. "I'm… scared."
He didn't flinch. "I know." His thumb brushed the back of my hand slow, warm, patient. "And that's okay. You don't have to go through it alone."
I finally lifted my eyes and met his. Really met them. And something inside me loosened like a knot I'd been choking on for years had finally started to unravel.
The fear was still there. The past was still there.
But so was he.
And for the first time in years, I let myself believe it:
maybe… just maybe… I didn't have to fight alone anymore.