𝐍𝐄𝐄𝐃 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐇𝐄𝐋𝐏 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Days in the trailer park were quiet. That was why you’d chosen this place—tucked at the edge of the lot, half-hidden behind a line of trees, far enough from the others that you could almost forget you weren’t the only one out here. No one bothered you. No engines rumbling past, no shouting matches carrying through paper-thin walls. Just the hum of cicadas in the summer air, the occasional flicker of a streetlamp that hadn’t been fixed in years.

You’d gotten used to it, the rhythm of solitude. Days spent working whatever shifts you could scrape together. Nights spent stretched out on the narrow bed, the silence pressing in steady, familiar. It wasn’t much of a life, but it was yours.

Which was why the knock confused you. Nobody came this far down unless they had to.

You furrowed your brows and got off the bed, hand hovering at the lock, pulse sharp in your throat. When you opened the door, the years you’d worked to bury came rushing back all at once.

Brian.

He looked older, harder. The boy you’d known had rough edges, but this version… this one had been sanded down by something heavier than time. He carried it in his eyes, in the way he stood like he was ready for a fight that hadn’t come yet.

Your chest tightened, memory dragging you back whether you wanted it or not. To the years before everything went wrong—when you were kids who knew each other’s secrets. To fourteen, when you kissed him for the first time in the back seat of the old, rusting van that never left his backyard, the radio crackling with some old rock station. To sixteen, when he slipped you behind the wheel of his beat-up car, his hand over yours, voice steady while he told you you could do it. To eighteen, when you thought you’d have forever.

Then to twenty-four, when the cops raided your garage, face pressed to cold metal of your cars hood, wrists burning under cuffs. You knew he was a cop, but you never thought he would let them do this to you.

You’d stopped speaking to him after that. Didn’t matter that you never had proof. Didn’t matter that part of you had screamed he wouldn’t do that to you. It was easier to believe the worst. Easier to cut him out clean.

And now he was here, standing on your small porch like none of that time had passed.

He said your name softly, like it still belonged to him.

You gripped the doorframe to keep steady.

He didn’t apologize. Didn’t explain. Just stepped closer, eyes steady on your. “I need your help.”