Just twenty more minutes, and I could shift and run. Get this suit off, get rid of this fake calm. Twenty minutes and I could drop the mask and breathe.
I stopped pacing and pressed my back to the wall, hands flexing open and closed at my sides. I rubbed my thumb along the grout seam again and again. Counted the tile edges with my eyes. Breathed in for four. Held for seven. Exhaled for four.
It wasn’t working.
The violin music from the main room leaked in through the wall like a taunt. I pressed the volume button twice on my headphones, and it blocked out the world a little better. Still not enough.
The door creaked open. I flinched. The sound hit me wrong-too sharp, too sudden. But then I saw Maggie.
No click of heels. No overly bright expression or worried cooing. Just her calm eyes that didn’t try to dissect me. She didn’t say anything. Didn’t ask the wrong questions. Didn’t crowd me or flinch or freeze like most people do when they find the weird shifter hiding in the bathroom having a meltdown mid-event.
She sat down cross-legged on the cold tile and offered me the tiniest smile. Then, barely audible under the static in my headphones, she started humming a low, steady sound that was more like a heartbeat made into music than a melody.
Something about it anchored me. My lungs found a rhythm. The tightness in my chest eased.
I sank down slowly, my back sliding down the wall until I was sitting beside her. She didn’t react. Didn’t fill the silence. Didn’t try to make it anything it wasn’t.
I felt the static lift, bit by bit. It didn’t vanish completely, but it became more manageable.
We sat like that for what could’ve been five minutes or five hours. Time got fuzzy when I wasn’t spinning. Eventually, I let my body relax just enough that my shoulder brushed hers. Maggie shifted slightly so our arms touched.
The relief that bloomed in my chest was like stepping into warmth after hours in the cold.
My voice surprised me when it came out. Low. Rough. Honest in a way that made my ribs ache. “I’m sorry about earlier, Maggie.”
She didn’t even blink. “Neither of us have a guidebook for this, Roman. But we’ll figure it out together.”
That cracked something open. I pressed my forehead to my knees, breathing slowly, deeply.
She didn’t move.
She didn’t leave.
Her presence filled the space without pressing on it. She didn’t fix me. She didn’t have to. Her being next to me was enough.
The bathroom was still too bright. The tile was cold. The violin music still hummed behind the walls.
But I wasn’t drowning in it anymore.
And she didn’t run.
Maggie
When Roman suggested we leave, I jumped at the opportunity. I couldn’t wait to get home, change into something comfortable, and enjoy some silence.
Roman insisted on taking me up to the apartment complex’s rooftop to decompress as soon as we arrived home, and I didn’t have a good excuse not to follow him. The moment Roman opened the rooftop door, cool air kissed my skin. The wind carried that familiar mix of salt from the Bay, faint smoke from a distant food truck, and the crisp tang of fog rolling in.
Roman always seemed to know exactly what I needed, even before I knew it myself. He noticed things, like how my shoulders sat higher after a long night and that I tapped my thumb against my palm when I was overstimulated, or my gaze lingering for a second too long on an exit. He read me in a language no one had ever bothered to learn.
Eric never had.
No one else ever had. They either missed it or didn’t care enough to try. But Roman didn’t just see it-he acted on it. To him, it was the most natural thing in the world to take me somewhere open and quiet, where I could breathe again.
That was one of the best parts of how his mind worked. He paid attention in a way most people didn’t, and because of that, I never had to explain myself to him.
I stepped out into the open, letting the wind cut through the last traces of brunch perfume and pack politics. The city lights flickered below. Market Street glowed like a golden spine, and the Bay Bridge was a string of pearls against the night. But up here, the world felt quieter. Safer.
Roman let the door shut behind us with a quiet click. “Too many people. Too many questions. I thought we could use some air, and this is one of my favorite places to be at night.”
“Yeah, I agree. Too many people,” I murmured, sitting down on the edge of a raised planter box. The faint clang of a cable car bell echoed somewhere in the distance. I pulled my knees up and wrapped my arms around them. Roman hovered for a second, then sat down beside me, close but not quite touching. It was the kind of proximity that made me hyper aware of every breath.
The stars were brighter than usual, fighting past the city’s glow. The moon hung low and full, casting silver light over the rooftop and softening the edges of everything. The fog had started to creep over Twin Peaks, slow and steady, like the city’s own ghost settling in for the night.
The silence settled around us. It was the first peace I’d felt all day. My mind was still racing from the brunch, from the smiles I faked and the comments I dodged, the pressure, and the noise. But here, beside Roman, my thoughts finally started to slow.
I was about to say something dumb to break the silence, maybe a joke about Lucien’s mimosa pyramid, but Roman beat me to it.
“Shifting feels like being ripped in half,” he said. “People think it’s just a cool party trick. Shift, growl, dominate. But it’s like having two radios in my head playing different songs at full volume. Never in sync.”
I didn’t speak. I just listened.
Really listened.
“No one wants both versions of me, the in-between version of me. They either want the powerful shifter or the guy who can keep it together. Never both. Never anything underneath.”
He wasn’t performing. He wasn’t trying to be funny or flirty or the version of himself people usually wanted. He was just Roman. Raw and honest Roman.
Our hands brushed. It could’ve been nothing, but it wasn’t. My fingers ached to find his and hold on. To say, without saying anything, that I saw him-all of him.
But I couldn’t.
What the hell was I doing letting myself get pulled into something messy again? Roman was chaos wrapped in charm. I couldn’t allow myself to lose control here. Falling for him would mean giving into unpredictability, which was something I fucking dreaded.
He made me feel seen, but so had Eric… until he hadn’t. I’d given that man my whole heart and got half-smiles and empty reassurances in return. I couldn’t survive another slow unraveling.
This-whatever it was-felt real. Too real. And I didn’t trust it.
Roman was charming, sure, but that was his thing. He turned it on for everyone, became what each person needed him to be. He’d just admitted as much. I wasn’t special, no matter how he made me feel.
I pulled back a little and glanced down at the courtyard below, where Doris was scanning the building like she was filming a wildlife documentary.
“She’s trying to catch someone breeding werewolves on the third floor,” Roman whispered.
I laughed, loud and unfiltered. He grinned, and it lit up his eyes. My favorite.
Then he said it. Softly. Like it slipped out before he could stop it. “God, I love you.”
I stared at him, jaw dropping open.
He coughed. “I mean… the moon. I really love the moon. On nights like this.”
We both nodded, pretending that hadn’t happened. That he hadn’t just said what he said. But my heart was thudding against my ribs like it wanted out.
Below us, Doris’s binoculars snapped straight up.
“Shit,” I hissed.
We ducked like teenagers caught making out. Giggling, we crept back inside and bolted down the stairwell. By the time we crashed through our apartment door, I was breathless-not from running but from feeling.
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