So I repeat her words in my head.Just stay away.
I force myself to walk toward the door.Her eyes don’t flinch, but I sense her breath catch.I feel her—every part of her—even as I start to pull away.
“I know what I did was shitty,” I say, my voice low and raw.“There’s a lot behind it—more than I’ve ever said out loud—but I don’t expect you to care.I don’t deserve your attention.I already fucked it up.”
She says nothing.Just watches me like she’s waiting to see if I’ll keep breaking or if I’ll finally say what I should’ve said all those years ago.
“I honestly don’t know where we’ll end up.Maybe nowhere.Maybe this was it.But I do know this—” My voice almost cracks, but I keep going.“I loved you then.I never stopped.”
Her breath hitches, just slightly.
“I still belong to you,” I say.“Even if you’ll never want to have me again.Even then.I still do.”
I look at her one last time, memorizing every piece of her—her mouth, the line of her jaw, the way her fingers twitch as if she’s about to reach for me but then thinks better of it.
Then I leave.
Because if I stay another second, I won’t survive it.
And if I kiss her, I won’t be able to let go and she deserves better.
ChapterThirty-Six
Kit
May 9th, 1997
The door clicks behind him—quiet, final, far too polite for what just happened between us.It closes with the softest sound, as if he’s still trying not to take up space in my life, still trying to leave without leaving a trace.But that sound slices through me like it always does, like it has for years, and I don’t even try to pretend that it doesn’t land somewhere deep in my chest where he still lives.
He said I didn’t want him.That I never would.And maybe I should’ve corrected him, should’ve told him that want has never been the issue.But I didn’t.Because want is easy.Want is instinct.Want is what burns under my skin the second I smell his scent or hear his voice.Want is my body remembering him before my mind can even brace itself.
It’s love that terrifies me.
I don’t move.
I don’t move.Every muscle in my body is pulled tight, like even the smallest exhale might let the grief devour me.The silence he left behind is deafening, and I know that if I try to speak—if I try to breathe through the wreckage—I might fall apart.
The room still feels full of him.
The lingering scent of whatever he’s wearing, sage, wood, and sin, clings to the air like a confession neither of us could quite make.And under that is something older, something so buried I almost don’t recognize it.Him.The him I knew.The boy who used to sing to me in the dark, who wrote songs about love and longing, and used my name like it was a promise.The boy who used to make me feel like I was the only real thing in his world—until he didn’t.
I sit down slowly, carefully, like I’m trying not to disturb the memory still vibrating between us.My knees fold like they no longer know how to support me, and I sink into the chair, not because I’m tired, but because standing feels like too much.I press my fingertips to my lips—not because I’m cold or nervous, but because they’re tingling, sensitized, like they’re bruised from a kiss that never happened.
Roderick didn’t touch me.Didn’t lean in.Didn’t push.But I felt it—the way his body yearned toward mine, the way his gaze begged me to let him, just once more.
One last time.
I felt him holding back, not because he didn’t want me, but because—for once—he respected the boundary I set.And somehow, that made it worse.
There was a moment.One breath.One impossible second suspended in time, where I wanted him to forget everything I’d said.Where I wanted him to take what he used to take—my mouth, my breath, my reason—and remind me what it was like to fall apart in his arms.I longed for his hands on my hips, his mouth on my neck, that familiar sound in his throat when he lost control.
I wanted to taste the years between us and prove they hadn’t dulled the fire.I wanted to know that he still remembered how to ruin me in all the best ways.
But I told him to stay away.
And he listened.
That’s what undoes me.
