“Connor Dempsey is my father.”
His mouth opens.Stays there.
“I help produce music.I have been writing songs since I was a teenager.”I press my lips together.“I get royalty checks that could pay for a new closet of your tailored suits every year for the rest of your life.I can support myself—and my father if it ever came to that.”
He swallows.“You don’t need my money?”
“You thought I did?”My voice sharpens.“You think I was with you for that?”
“No, but?—”
There’s no point in discussing what he thought or why he’s dating a teacher who can barely make it on her own.Is he trying to save me?I don’t need to be saved, just to be loved.
“I came because I didn’t want to be an asshole and break up with you over the phone.But this—this just proved what I already knew.We’re not compatible.And I’m not going to waste another second pretending we are.”
“But we’re so perfect together, Kit,” he disagrees.“My family loves the fact that we’re together.You can see that, can’t you?”
I wave a hand like I’m swatting away smoke.
“No.We’re just convenient.And I’m not a charity case.I don’t need anyone to save me.”
I don’t wait for him to respond.I turn away and walk away with the soft burn of Roderick’s kiss still etched into my lips.
ChapterFifty-Four
Roderick
May 17th, 1997
I give myself a day to ...what, exactly?To lick the wounds left by her silence?To mourn the version of us that never had the chance to be reborn?Maybe to pretend I didn’t feel something shift beneath my skin when I kissed her.My Kit.
Maybe to stand still long enough to accept that the second chance I spent years secretly begging the universe for had already slipped through my fingers the moment I stepped back into her life.
Truth is, I don’t even know how to categorize what that moment—that kiss was.What it meant.There aren’t words that fit neatly around it.No label that can contain the feeling of her lips on mine and the way my entire fucking existence recalibrated in a heartbeat.All I know is it was everything—until it ended.Just like it did twelve years ago.
Only this time, I was lucid enough to feel every goddamn second of it unraveling in real time.Back then, Kit and I broke up without even managing an ending.No big fight after she caught me.There weren’t any grand gestures.Just a long, stretched silence.It was as if something sacred had been lost, and we were both too young, or too foolish, to know how to go looking for it.
She must’ve said something after she saw me with another woman giving me a blow job.How I regret that moment, but it was staged.I had to get really fucked up to do what Connor Dempsey had asked me to do.“It’s a one-time thing, you have to pretend like you’ve pretended all other times,” he said.“It doesn’t count.It never counts.”
But this time they took it too far, and it fucking did.It counted.Not just because she saw it, but because it really happened.
And I can’t even remember exactly the words Kit said to me before she walked away.The only thing I carry with me is the moment I realized everything between us was broken—and it was on me.
Everything from those days is blurry around the edges.My memory is a burned reel—spots missing, others too bright and too loud.I was wrecked.Lost in some murky, drug-fueled spiral where language dissolved into sounds and even her voice sounded distorted.
I remember Eddie, our manager, watching me like I was some stubborn, half-drowned animal, muttering, “Go get her, asshole,” as if that would fix everything.Like love was a song I could just play again, smoother this time.
He always was the closest thing I had to a voice of reason, not that I gave a damn.He saved me more times than I can think of ...until he left to deal with real life —that’s what he said.
I wonder if I went to him now and told him the truth—told him how far I’ve fallen—if he’ll help me fix my shit, help me find myself.Then again, maybe he already knows I’ve hit the bottom of the barrel.
Everyone knows, right?
Every shattered piece of me is out there for the world to consume—my downfall carefully cataloged in glossy tabloid spreads next to photos of my father, the blueprint of bad decisions I’ve been following like a religion.Anyone can buy them at a newsstand or even at a grocery store.
They exaggerate my behavior, sure.But not by much.I could go and ask for them to retract, but it’s useless.The problem is that when it happened, I was too far gone to dispute it, too fucked up to even recognize myself in the stories they printed.And maybe the saddest part is that no one is reading them and wondering how they could help.Nope, they just enjoy my downfall.Humanity is morbid; they want everybody’s pain.It makes them feel like they’re not alone, or that someone else has it worse, so their life isn’t shitty.
There might be a place where I can find some truths about what happened to me during the first five, maybe seven years after we broke up.The letters I wrote to Kit.There’re probably dozens of them.Maybe more.They weren’t meant to save me—or for her to read them.
