She lay on the guest bed, curled on her side, the soft fabric of the blanket pulled to her chin. Her clothes were folded on the chair. Blake had left a shirt for her to sleep in on the edge of the bed\u2014simple, clean, and oversized. She hadn\u2019t questioned how he knew she\u2019d need it. She hadn\u2019t questioned anything he did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The room was so quiet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not in a bad way\u2014there was no yelling, no footsteps pacing the hall, no music pulsing through walls she didn\u2019t control. But the stillness was so foreign it pressed against her chest like weight. It wasn\u2019t silence she feared\u2014it was the space it left behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The air smelled like cedar and something faintly crisp. Like fresh laundry and distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She stared at the ceiling until her eyes ached. Her thoughts came in flashes- not full sentences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her father\u2019s face. The sneer. The disappointment he never had to speak aloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The girl on the stairs laughing, brushing past her like she wasn\u2019t even there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The music pounding in her chest at the party. The cold. The lost wallet. Her broken heel. Her own breath in her throat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Blake\u2019s car. His voice. His silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A single tear slipped down the side of her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away. It simply disappeared onto the pillow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her body felt weightless and unbearably heavy at once. She tried to summon thoughts\u2014about what she\u2019d do tomorrow, what she should have said tonight. But her mind resisted. She wasn\u2019t thinking. Just\u2026 being. Which was somehow worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her phone vibrated on the nightstand. She blinked at the screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Blake: <\/strong>Sleep. You\u2019re safe here.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n That was all it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She read it twice. Then again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her eyes fluttered closed. A slow breath left her body, long and hollow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sleep came slowly. Not all at once. But eventually, the ache in her chest eased, her breath settled, and the heaviness behind her eyes pulled her under.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Outside the door, the apartment remained still. Nothing demanded her. Nothing chased her. For the first time in what felt like forever, she was not surviving. She was simply resting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tomorrow would come. So would the questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But tonight, in the quiet warmth of a place that wasn\u2019t hers, she found something closer to peace. Enough to carry her into the morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" She lay on the guest bed, curled on her side, the soft fabric of the blanket pulled to her chin. Her clothes were folded on the chair. Blake had left a shirt for her to sleep in on the edge of the bed\u2014simple, clean, and oversized. She hadn\u2019t questioned how he knew she\u2019d need it….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-beast","pmpro-has-access"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sensualtrio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sensualtrio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sensualtrio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sensualtrio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sensualtrio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=832"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sensualtrio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":908,"href":"https:\/\/sensualtrio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions\/908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sensualtrio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sensualtrio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sensualtrio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}