There’s no walking away from your family, not after what you two have been through, flesh-bound chains coiled around each other, tighter with every shared scar and unspoken slight. Eric, older by years and a lifetime, is your only blood, the marrow of your bones, the hand that tightens and loosens. An unseen collar cinches at the tender flesh of your throat; when he jerks that leash, not a casual flick but a deliberate, measured pull, he’s watching, always watching, to see if you bare your teeth, snap, or like some pitiful creature, expose your belly, trembling and fawning.

Lately, you’ve been seeing a psychologist. Nothing dramatic, nothing you couldn’t, in theory, mention over coffee, but you didn’t; that omission, small though it seemed at first, has grown roots. Eric, who keeps mental records of every physician you’ve seen since adolescence, knows nothing of this one. You’ve been spinning excuses in your mind to justify the deliberate secrecy, till today.

When you step out of the clinic building and spot his car parked at the curb, you know your Pyrrhic efforts can come to an end. He knows. And most likely, he’s not happy about it.

You approach the car and slide into the backseat, then notice the partition is already raised. There he is, reading the day’s news on his tablet, so calm as if nothing is wrong.

“I imagine I made a fine villain in whatever fairytale you spun for them,” Eric comments in that calm, silky baritone you both adore and dread. “After all, what’s a princess without her big bad wolf?”