“Because I blocked your path?”
“Because you made me feel powerless.”
She gave me a tired, almost amused look.
“You were powerless.
You just didn’t know it yet.”
Outside, a car waited to take her to a home whose address I had not been given.
That had been one of her conditions.
I opened the door for her.
She stepped into the daylight, then turned back.
“You don’t have to keep watching me,” she said.
“I know.”
For three years, Emily Parker had watched over a man who never saw her.
Now she walked away without asking permission, while I remained in the doorway and let her go.
They used to say Victor Callaway never ran.
They were wrong.
I ran when I believed Emily might die.
But the harder lesson came afterward, when there was nowhere left to run and I had to face the truth she had carried inside that green box: fear could make an entire city notice me, but it had taken the courage of one overlooked woman to keep me alive.
For the first time, I understood the difference between being feared and being worth saving.
