Chapter One: The Body Remembers
Imani learned how to be still.
Stillness became her survival skill—her armor.
Stillness is what helped her build a life that looked healed.
A husband.
A home.
Soft mornings and predictable nights.
Stillness kept her from asking questions she didn’t want the answers to.
But stillness has a flaw.
It gives the body room to speak.
She noticed it first in small ways.
A tightness that didn’t belong to her husband’s touch.
A restlessness she couldn’t pray away.
A heat that came without invitation and stayed long after she told it to leave.
She told herself it was stress.
Hormones.
Memory misfiring.
But memory doesn’t misfire.
It waits.
That night, Noah slept beside her, one arm draped across her waist—protective, familiar, safe. His breathing was even. Content.
Imani stared at the ceiling, her heart thudding for no reason she could explain.
Then her phone buzzed.
Once.
She didn’t move.
It buzzed again.
Her body reacted before her mind did.
Her stomach tightened.
Her thighs pressed together.
Her breath hitched—sharp, traitorous.
She already knew who it was.
The message was simple.
I know.
No name.
No explanation.
Her fingers trembled as she locked the screen without opening it.
Noah shifted in his sleep, murmuring her name softly, unaware that something ancient had just been awakened inside his wife.
Imani closed her eyes.
And for the first time in years, she felt it.
That pull.
That recognition.
That familiar, dangerous heat that didn’t ask permission.
Her body remembered Liam Sullivan.
