Sharp panic rises in my chest. Have I missed her? Did she somehow catch the last train after all? Or worse—did she see mycar arrive and deliberately hide, believing I’ve come to deliver more pain?
I sprint back outside, snow immediately coating my hair, melting against my heated skin. The taxi still idles at the curb, driver slouched behind the wheel, watching something on his phone. Beyond him, a solitary figure stands on the sidewalk near the station’s side entrance, shoulders hunched against falling snow.
Red coat. Dark hair collecting snowflakes like stars.
Star.
My heart stops, restarts with painful intensity. She hasn’t seen me yet, her gaze fixed on the sidewalk as if willing a train to appear in the middle of the night. The thirty feet of snow-covered concrete feels infinite, laden with all my mother’s lies, all the pain those lies have caused.
I take one step forward. Another. My shoe crunches against fresh snow, the sound impossibly loud in the midnight quiet.
She turns.
Our eyes meet across the white expanse, and I watch recognition flash across her features, followed immediately by confusion, uncertainty, pain. She doesn’t move toward me, doesn’t speak, just stands motionless as snowflakes continue their descent around her still figure.
“Star.” Her name escapes me on a cloud of visible breath.
She takes a half-step back. “Cillian,” she says, her voice carrying the wary tone of someone approaching a wounded animal. “What are you doing here?”
The distance between us is still too great. I move closer, measuring each step, afraid she might bolt if I approach too quickly. “Looking for you,” I say simply. “I know what my mother did.”
Her face pales. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, the lie as foreign on her honest lips as the note she left me.
“You don’t have to protect her anymore,” I tell her, close enough now to see her eyes widen, to catch the slight tremor in her hand. “Bea told me everything. The blackmail. The threats to your art therapy program. All of it.”
A small sound escapes her—part gasp, part sob. “She said she’d destroy everything. The children’s program, my gallery show, your position at the firm. She had documentation, files—she knew things no one should have known.”
“I know,” I say, taking another step closer. Snow crunches beneath my feet, marking my progress toward her. “And she would have done it too. That’s who she is. Who she’s always been. I just never wanted to see it.”
Star’s shoulders slump slightly, the defensive posture of seconds ago melting into exhaustion. “I had to leave,” she says. “Those children need that program. I couldn’t let her take that away because of me.”
“I know that too.” I’m close enough now to see individual snowflakes caught in her eyelashes, to count the small freckles across her nose that appear in winter when her summer tan fades. “But you don’t have to sacrifice anything anymore. Neither of us does.”
Confusion clouds her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I cut the strings,” I tell her, the words simple but weighted with finality. “All of them. I called my finance manager. Liquidated my position in the family trust. Sold my shares in the estate. Withdrew from the firm. Every financial tie to my mother, to the Brown legacy is gone.”
Star’s breath catches, visible in the cold night air. “Cillian, no. Your inheritance, your—”
“Wasn’t worth the price,” I interrupt gently.
“But your family—”
“You’re my family now,” I say, reaching for her hand, relieved beyond words when she doesn’t pull away. Her fingers arecold against mine, but they curl instinctively around my palm, seeking warmth, connection. “If you’ll still have me.”
Star stares at our joined hands, then back at my face, searching for something—certainty, perhaps, or regret. “Are you sure?” she asks. “What your mother threatened, what she could still do.”
“She can’t do anything anymore,” I tell her. “Her power came from my compliance, from my need for her approval, from financial ties I was afraid to break. Without those, she’s just a woman who uses fear as currency. And I’m not buying anymore.”
A single tear tracks down Star’s cheek, freezing before it can fall. “I left because I thought it was the only way to protect what matters,” she says softly. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
I reach up, brushing snow from her hair with my free hand. “I know. And I should have protected you from the beginning. I should have seen what was happening.” My voice catches. “I’m sorry I brought you into that house, exposed you to her manipulation.”
“You couldn’t have known she’d go that far,” Star says, absolving me when I least deserve it, most need it.
“I should have.” The truth sits heavy between us. “On some level, I did know. I’ve watched her manipulate people my entire life. I just never thought she’d target you so directly, so cruelly.”
Snow continues to fall around us, collecting on shoulders, on hair, on the suitcase that stands like a monument to sacrifice between us. The taxi driver glances our way, then back to his phone, indifferent to the reconstruction of two lives happening on his watch.
