“You’re frightened,” she says softly. “And for good reason. My son is… intense. He was born with his father’s rage and my sensitivity. A cursed braid if I ever saw one.”
I close my eyes. “I’m not afraid of him hurting me,” I whisper. “I’m afraid of… how much of myself I’ve tied to him. How easy it was to lose every line I promised I’d never cross.”
“He adores you,” she murmurs.
In his own deranged, mind-bending way.“I know.” And God help me, the truth of it splits me open.
“Then why are you running?”
“Because he lied.” My voice cracks. “Because he made choices for my body. Because he tried to bind me to him with a baby I wasn’t ready for. Because I?—”
My chest tightens so sharply I choke. “Because I adore him too…so much it makes me stupid.”
Mama Draven hums softly—the same strange, haunting note Zane responds to, the one I now realize she used to soothe him for years.
“Love is not stupidity,” she says gently. “It is vulnerability. And vulnerability terrifies the wounded.”
“I am not wounded,” I snap, wiping another tear.
“Honey,” she replies. “You don’t have to be carved open to bleed.”
I let out a broken laugh. “You’re not making this better.”
“No,” she agrees. “But maybe I can make you brave.”
Footsteps thunder down the hall and my stupid heart jumps.
Zane.
I hear the tremor in each step, the ragged inhale, the near-silent curse under his breath. He’s trying to calm himself, trying to hold it together, but failing in a way that cuts me.
“Move, Mama.”
“Not yet.”
“Move.”
His voice is shredded raw.
“Not until you breathe,” she says.
“I can’t breathe without her.”
Something inside me gives a painful twist. “Zane—” I whisper, even though the door is still locked between us.
Everything goes still. Then the soft sound of his palm pressing to the wood.
“Baby,” he rasps. “Please open the door.”
“I can’t,” I whisper.
“I know. I know. Just—let me talk to you.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Okay,” I say brokenly. “But I’m not unlocking it.”
Another pause. Another inhale. And then, “Ruby, I’m sorry.”
It’s Zane at his rawest. A drop-to-his-knees kind of confession.
