Victoria’s chest ached with something she refused to name.
She slipped out the door, closing it without a sound.
The hallway was dim and cool, the air carrying the faint scent of someone’s too-strong laundry detergent. Her heels clicked softly on the worn linoleum as she made her way to the stairwell. Outside, the first suggestion of dawn was just beginning to pale the sky, but the streetlamps still burned.
She didn’t look back.
The streets of Phoenix Ridge were still asleep when Victoria hit her stride.
The predawn air was cool, salted from the ocean, carrying the distant, rhythmic crash of waves against the cliffs. She could smell the sea before she could see it — the mineral tang threading through the faint sweetness of night-blooming jasmine from the manicured hedges of the nicer neighborhoods. Her breath fogged faintly in the air, the steady rhythm of inhale-exhale syncing with the slap of her running shoes against the pavement.
The city’s personality shifted in these hours, stripped of its daytime chaos. Storefronts were dark, their windows reflecting the streetlamps in thin, fractured lines. The polished glass of the coffee shop she sometimes stopped at was shuttered tight. A lone delivery truck idled at the corner of Jefferson and Lincoln, its driver sipping from a thermos while crates of fresh bread steamed faintly in the cool air. A cat darted across the street, vanishing under a parked sedan.
It should have felt calming. This run was supposed to center her — it always had. Her routine was sacred: two miles to wake the muscles, settle into a steady cadence, and let her mind clear. This was where she rebuilt herself every morning, brick by brick, discipline tightening around her like armor.
But today, the bricks wouldn’t hold.
Every footfall felt as if it shook something loose instead of setting it in place.
Isabel’s face — flushed and hungry.
Isabel’s voice — low and commanding.
Isabel’s hands — on her throat. Inside her.
Her breath stuttered. She pushed harder, lengthening her stride as if she could outrun the memory. She focused on the mechanics—roll through the foot, engage the core, keep theshoulders relaxed. She visualized each mile as a wall, the first one already halfway built in her mind.
By the end of mile one, the wall was shaky but standing. Her breathing had evened out. Her legs were warm, her stride easy. She could almost believe last night was just a slip — a brief lapse in judgment. She could tuck it away with all the other mistakes she’d made in her personal life, never to be spoken of again.
Then a gust of wind funneled between two buildings, catching her off guard. The streetlamp’s light shifted over the pavement in a pattern that reminded her of the blinds in Isabel’s bedroom, and just like that, the wall cracked. She saw bronze skin in fractured light, the rise and fall of Isabel’s back as she slept. She remembered how it had felt to wake up beside her — terrifying, raw, intoxicating.
She gritted her teeth and pushed into mile two.
Here, the streets widened, opening toward the cliffside road. On her left, the ocean unfurled under the first suggestion of dawn — not yet gold, but deep blue and silver, the horizon smudged like charcoal. The guardrails glinted faintly, slick with sea spray. The air was sharper here, cleaner, with an undercurrent of diesel from the occasional fishing boat making its way back to harbor.
Mile two was about discipline. This was where she usually locked in, let the rhythm carry her. She imagined mortar setting between the bricks, sealing the cracks. She repeated silent commands in her head:Focus. Control. Detach.
But then her mind betrayed her. Isabel’s laugh — that unrestrained, warm burst of sound — played over the rush of the wind. The phantom weight of Isabel’s thigh pressing between hers made her stumble for half a step.
Her pace faltered, and with it, the wall crumbled again.
By the time she hit the usual turnaround point, her routine was ruined. She stopped for a fraction of a second, her chestrising and falling as she stared down the stretch of road that would take her home. She could go back, shower, and lock it down before work.
Instead, she turned in the opposite direction and pushed forward.
She knew exactly what she was doing — this wasn’t about training anymore. This was punishment.
Her father’s voice, still sharp in her memory after all these years, rang through her head.If you’ve got enough breath to think about quitting, Langley, you’ve got enough breath to keep running.She’d been twelve when he’d first dragged her out of bed at dawn, made her run until her lungs burned and her legs trembled. The rules were simple: you didn’t stop until you’d earned the right to stop.
And she hadn’t earned it yet.
So, she kept going, every muscle in her legs tightening as she drove herself up the incline toward the old lighthouse loop — two extra miles of rolling hills and ocean wind that cut through even the warmest morning. Her calves screamed on the uphill stretch; her quads burned on the downhill. She welcomed it. Pain was clean. Simple. It left no room for thoughts of Isabel’s mouth, Isabel’s fingers, Isabel’s voice calling hergood girlin that low, ruinous tone.
The extra loop should have done it — should have beaten the memories out of her body the way her father’s drills had once burned hesitation out of her. But as she crested the final hill, her lungs pulling at the air like they couldn’t get enough, Isabel was still there. She was in the press of Victoria’s sports bra against her skin, the way the straps dug into her shoulders, the way the sweat slid down the back of her neck. She was in the tight, desperate ache between her legs that had nothing to do with the run.
By the time Victoria turned back toward home, her anger was simmering — not at Isabel, but at herself. At her own lack of control.
She finished the loop with her teeth clenched, her legs churning in a last, punishing burst of speed.
