Because Rod never used to listen.He used to bulldoze his way through apologies, boundaries, and sense.He would show up at two in the morning with bloodshot eyes after not calling me for days and still had the audacity to tell me that he needed me.
He used to throw his need at me like it was penance.But today ...today he gave me honesty—stripped bare of performance, free of manipulation.
He gave me pain.Truth.
Truth that cracks ribs.
Truth that splits you open from the inside, that presses against your lungs, taking all the oxygen until you can’t breathe, and still begs to be heard.
He said he didn’t know where we’d end up.That he didn’t deserve me.That he still loved me.And then he walked out.
Who walks away after giving you the leftover pieces of himself?
And now I’m sitting here, hollowed out by restraint, scorched by something far crueler than desire: the memory of what it used to feel like to be his.
My thighs press together as if my body’s trying to quell the ache blooming between them.It’s a craving that’s crawled out of hibernation.It’s my body recalling his weight over mine, his mouth between my thighs, the way he used to whisper my name when he came, like I was the prayer he wasn’t supposed to say out loud.
I’m flushed and wet and furious at myself for remembering.For feeling this way—for still being this wound-tight when it comes to him.Because even after everything, even after the lies and the years and the silence ...I still want him.
Even after everything, he makes me feel a lot more than what Timothy has in the past two years.
That desire pulses through my veins, coils around my spine, and lurks low and persistent in my gut.It’s not love.Not right now.It’s lust, grief, and something feral.Something I won’t name because if I do, I’d break apart entirely.
I tip my head back and press my palms to my eyes, trying to trap the tears before they have the chance to fall.But they don’t come.I’m too scraped thin for that.Too undone.
This isn’t sadness—it’s ruin.
I’m stuck in the aftershock of a man who finally gave me the one thing I’ve begged for: sincerity.
Truths without me having to guess and hope I’m right.And somehow that hurts more than all the betrayals combined.
Because it means he might really be trying to change, to be better.
And if he is ...if he’s truly crawling his way back from the wreckage of who he used to be ...then what the fuck am I supposed to do with this version of him?This version who looks at me like I’m still his.
Who says he still belongs to me, like it’s not an apology or a plea—but a fact.
I didn’t ask for this.
I asked him to leave.To stay away.
And now I can’t stop imagining what would’ve happened if I hadn’t.
If I’d stood up.Crossed the room.Pulled him in by the collar of his shirt and kissed him until all that tension between us shattered.I can feel it.I can taste it.And it makes me sick with want.
Because I remember exactly who I was when I was his.
And the terrifying truth is—that maybe I still am.
“Don’t do this to yourself, Kit,” I say out loud, holding myself accountable.“You know how it ends.”
I saw it with my parents.Dad never stopped cheating.Mom was just good at pretending it never hurt.Not to mentionhisparents.How many times have Clara Vanderpool and Caleb Wilder divorced?Five?I lost count.The last time, they didn’t even get married again before Caleb was caught by the paparazzi at a club fucking a twenty-something-year-old college student.
It never ends.They feel entitled to everything.If only I could find someone who could make me feel a tenth of what I do for him.
Is that even possible?
ChapterThirty-Seven
