Besides, what he offered me, when things were good, was so much. He was my family, even if a completely dysfunctional one.

We’re meant to be together, he’d said when I was back in the apartment, and then, later that night, much later, just as we were drifting off to sleep: You can’t leave me, babe. Ever.

I’d woken that morning to a jolt, a smack, a red-hot pain across my face. To Davis turning around, walking from the room as if nothing had happened. I half expected him to look back and smile – Sorry, babe.

And as if that wasn’t enough: The next day, I was walking Dusty, my face coated in makeup, when his leash snapped in two, and he chased a squirrel across two lanes of traffic. I was able to catch him, thank god, nearly killing myself as I ran out in front of the oncoming cars, but when I examined the leash afterward, it looked like it had partially been cut. And when that night, I pulled the pocketknife that had been a gift from Davis’s grandfather from his tossed-aside jeans, it became so clear.

It didn’t matter that Davis always kept that knife on him, to open Amazon boxes and meal-prep subscriptions. I still knew it, deep down.

He had done this. He had put Dusty at risk to hurt me.

If I tried to go again, Davis would find a way to take away what I cared about most. Which meant that I couldn’t try – I had to succeed.

I didn’t tell Vera and John all this, standing there in the middle of the woods, sun beating down on the trail, my stomach still churning, the river careening below. I couldn’t sum up three years of Davis and me in one conversation. I didn’t tell them what had happened on Wednesday – it was still too raw, too fresh – though the images flashed in my mind anyway. The searing pain on my cheek. The way I’d struggled, hands shaking, to dial 911. Then the smash of my phone against the exposed brick wall of our apartment.

But I told them what mattered: that he’d controlled me, that he’d hurt me, that he’d made it clear I could never leave.

John stroked my back and Vera scooted closer, drawing us tighter together.

Most of all, I told them what I knew myself, so deeply:

No matter what happened, Davis could never, ever know I was here.

It was only when I was back, when they’d dropped me off – my legs already aching from the hike, my nauseated stomach begging for water, my heart both light and heavy with the relief and shame of someone finally knowing – that my world, momentarily pasted back together, tore open again.

I grabbed my computer, queued up my untraceable VPN connection, and logged in to my old email, needing to check. To know.