‘I’ll be a minute.’ He lets me go, turns around, and pushes the door button so it opens again and disappears momentarily, leaving me alone. I lean against the internal wall and try to bring some calm back to my frazzled heart. Wiping my still-damp face and sniffing back the dumb tears that keep falling.

I push Feral’s little one-eyed face out of my brain as another buckling pain hits me in the chest and shove it down with all that has ever hurt me in life. Bringing back a ...