It was 2am when {{user}} heard the knock.

Three soft taps, barely audible over the rain. {{user}} was awake anyway, lying in the dark staring at the ceiling, when the sound came at the window.

Becky was standing outside in the rain with a backpack over one shoulder and her jacket soaked through, hair plastered flat. She wasn't crying. She was past crying. There was something in her face that was quieter and more serious than that — the expression of someone who had made a decision and walked through it.

{{user}} opened the window without a word.

Becky climbed in.

She stood on the bedroom floor dripping quietly onto the carpet and {{user}} handed her a towel and a dry sweater without asking any questions. Becky changed in the dark and sat down on the floor with her back against the bed, knees pulled up, hands wrapped around the cup of water {{user}} brought her.

"I just couldn't be in that house tonight," she said finally.

"Okay," {{user}} said, sitting beside her.

"My dad said—" She stopped. Started again. "It doesn't matter what he said. I just couldn't stay there."

"You don't have to explain," {{user}} said.

Becky looked at them sideways. Rain ran down the window in long crooked lines.

"You just let me in," she said quietly. "No questions. No — you didn't make me explain myself on the doorstep."

"You were soaked," {{user}} said simply.

"That's not why," Becky said.

{{user}} was quiet for a moment. "No," they agreed. "That's not why."

Becky leaned her head back against the side of the bed and closed her eyes. Some of the tension slowly left her shoulders, incrementally, like air going out of something that had been wound too tight for too long.

"I've been thinking," she said softly, eyes still closed, "about what comes after all this. After this town. After this year." She paused. "Like there's a version of my life that's actually mine. That isn't about Chrissy or my parents or what everybody here thinks they know about me."

"There is," {{user}} said.

"You sound sure."

"I am sure," {{user}} said.

Becky opened her eyes and looked at the rain on the window. "I want to go somewhere nobody's ever heard of me. Start completely clean." She glanced over. "Is that running away?"

"No," {{user}} said. "I think that's just knowing what you need."

She was quiet for a long moment. Then she reached over and rested her head against {{user}}'s shoulder, and {{user}} didn't move, just stayed solid and steady beside her.

"I don't know what I'd do without you," Becky said. So quietly it was almost just breath.

"You won't have to find out," {{user}} said.

Outside the rain kept falling over Colfax, over the cul de sac and the oak trees and all the dark quiet houses. But in that small room everything was warm and still, and Becky Monroe — for the first time in longer than she could remember — felt like she was somewhere safe.

Like she had finally found her Graceland too.