Chapter 177: What She Tells Herself

Chapter 177: Chapter 177: What She Tells Herself

Grace had started keeping a list.

Not written down — that felt too dangerous, too easy for someone to find — but organized carefully in her mind instead, the same way she’d once organized every detail of a room before deciding whether it was safe to speak in it. Small things, mostly. The rhythm of Erik’s supply runs. The particular tone he used with his brother versus the one he reserved for the woman with red hair. The way his shoulders relaxed, however briefly, whenever he thought no one was watching him closely enough to notice.

She’d been watching for weeks now. Long enough to know things about him that she suspected even his own family didn’t fully notice.

As far as she’d ever been able to tell, that family consisted of five people — Erik, his brother Kai, the dark-haired man called Killian, the quieter one named Ben, and the redhead everyone spoke of with a particular reverence, as though she were something worth protecting above all else. Five people, moving together always, supply runs and defended floors and the particular closeness of a unit that had already decided, long before Grace had ever entered their orbit, exactly who belonged inside it and who didn’t.

She hated them for that. All of them, though the redhead most of all.

They don’t even know him, Grace thought, curled in her chair, watching the rain streak steadily down her window. Not really. Not the way I do.

She’d watched him closely enough, these past weeks, to know things she was certain the others had never bothered to notice — the particular stillness he carried when he thought a threat might be near, the way his jaw tightened fractionally before he made a decision that clearly cost him something, the quiet, careful discipline underneath every single thing he did. His family saw the surface of him. The protector, the leader, the steady hand that kept everyone else standing upright.

Grace saw the rest. Or believed she did, with the same absolute, unshakable certainty that had defined every feeling she’d ever allowed herself since waking into this extreme, unrestrained new world.

They don’t love him, she told herself, the thought settling warm and certain in her chest. Not the way I do. They need him. That’s different. That’s not the same thing at all.

It wasn’t fair, the way his family occupied every hour of his day, every ounce of his loyalty, leaving nothing left over for the one person who actually understood him. Grace knew, somewhere beneath the obsessive clarity that had become her constant companion since arriving in this body, that fairness had very little to do with any of it. But understanding the unfairness and accepting it were two entirely different things, and Grace had never once, in either of her lives, been particularly good at accepting anything simply because it was true.

In my old life, she thought, the memory arriving with its familiar, bitter clarity, they would have called this obsession. Called it a symptom. Locked me somewhere quiet and told my parents it was for my own good.

Here, it was simply how much she felt. And she’d stopped apologizing for the size of it weeks ago.

She thought about approaching him directly — had thought about it more than once, turning the fantasy over in the dark, imagining the exact words she might say, the exact expression she might wear, soft and grateful and harmless, the version of herself she’d perfected specifically for moments like this. She knew what people saw when they looked at her. Something fragile. Something angelic, almost, pale and delicate and entirely without threat, the particular kind of beauty that made strangers want to protect her rather than question her. She’d learned to use that within days of waking into this new world, the same way she’d once learned to soften her voice in front of doctors who wanted evidence she was calming down.

It worked on nearly everyone. She simply hadn’t found the right moment to use it on him yet.

Not yet. She’d told herself that every day for weeks now, and every day, the certainty beneath it grew a little sharper, a little more absolute. Soon. Once I understand exactly what stands between us.

What stood between them, increasingly, seemed to be Penelope.

Not the brothers — Grace had decided, somewhere in her careful weeks of observation, that Kai’s loyalty was surface-level, warm but replaceable, the kind of bond that could bend without breaking entirely. Not Killian or Ben either, not truly — competent, present, but clearly orbiting a different center of gravity than the one Grace actually cared about.

Penelope was different. Penelope was the one Erik’s eyes found first in any room. The one whose safety he checked before his own. The one he’d apparently die for without a single moment’s hesitation, judging by the particular, absolute devotion Grace had watched him carry toward her across weeks of quiet, patient surveillance.

If she wasn’t there, Grace thought, the idea settling into her mind slowly, taking root with the same patient, growing certainty as everything else she’d allowed herself to feel since waking into this new world, he’d have room for someone else. He’d finally have room for me.

She didn’t let herself finish the thought fully, not tonight. It was too soon, too raw, the shape of it still forming at the edges rather than settling into anything concrete enough to act on. But she let it sit there anyway, warm and dangerous, taking up more space in her mind with every passing day.

A knock sounded at her door, and Grace startled slightly, old instinct flaring before she recognized the particular rhythm of it — light, familiar, one of the few neighbors on this floor who still bothered checking on the woman everyone else had quietly learned to avoid.

She opened the door to find an older woman standing there, someone Grace vaguely recognized from the floor’s scattered, exhausted community, holding a small, wrapped bundle.

"Extra bread," the woman said, offering it. "My husband made too much. Thought you might want some."

Grace accepted it with the same soft, grateful smile she’d perfected weeks ago, the version of herself designed to disarm, to reassure, to make people forget entirely that anything about her might warrant caution. She’d watched the effect settle over strangers a dozen times now — the way people’s shoulders eased, the way suspicion melted into instinctive protectiveness, as though her face itself were proof enough that she couldn’t possibly be dangerous.

"Thank you," she said, voice quiet and fragile in exactly the register that invited sympathy rather than suspicion. "That’s very kind."

The woman lingered a moment, studying her with the particular concern reserved for someone who seemed perpetually alone. "You doing all right, dear? We don’t see you much."

"I’m managing," Grace said, letting just enough vulnerability show through the words to feel convincing. "It’s been a hard adjustment. I don’t have anyone left, really. Just myself."

"That’s a shame." The woman’s expression softened further, exactly as Grace had intended. "You should come up for dinner sometime. We’ve got a decent little group on this floor, once you get to know everyone."

"Maybe I will," Grace said, though she had no intention of it at all. Dinner meant exposure. Exposure meant scrutiny, questions, the particular danger of too many eyes noticing too much about a woman who’d learned, the hard way, that being noticed rarely ended well for her.

The woman left a few minutes later, and Grace closed the door behind her, setting the bread aside without much interest, her mind already circling back to the thought she’d set down only briefly.

If she wasn’t there.

She crossed to the window again, watching the rain fall steadily over the flooded city, and let herself imagine, just for a moment, what it might feel like to have Erik’s attention fully, uncomplicatedly hers — no family competing for his loyalty, no watchful redhead standing between them, just the two of them, finally understanding each other the way she’d been certain, from the very first night in that hallway, that they were always meant to.

Soon, she told herself again, the word settling warm and certain behind her ribs. I just need to understand her first. What she means to him. What it would take to make that bond a little less unbreakable.

She didn’t know yet what shape that understanding might take. She only knew, with the same absolute, unshakable certainty that had carried her through every extreme feeling of her entire life, that she intended to find out.

Outside, the storm continued its steady assault against the building, and somewhere below, in a small guarded circle of people who trusted each other completely, Erik Ryker had no idea at all that he’d become the center of a devotion patient enough to wait, and dangerous enough to eventually stop waiting entirely.