Inside was an ornament, cracked down one side, paint peeling.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
I remembered the winter it had come from, a time that was mine and not mine anymore.A younger version of myself laughing at a table that felt like it might last forever.Promises spoken over candlelight, a life I thought I was building.
Then the fire.The betrayal.The years that turned everything to ash.
The ornament pinched between my fingers cut as pleasantly as it stung, a needle threading old wounds I’d thought were long dead.
Belle noticed me standing there, staring down at it.She didn’t ask.She just smiled gently, as though she knew enough not to.Then she turned back to her stars and her lights, letting me hold the memory without forcing it into words.
And for the first time in longer than I could admit, I let the music play.
It was the little things that started to gnaw at me.The things I never thought I’d notice, let alone care about.
The curl of her hair when she brushed it back behind her ear, quick and thoughtless, like she didn’t know how that single motion hooked my eyes and held them.The way a dimple appeared when she grinned at a wreath she’d hung crooked on purpose, laughing softly as if she’d played some secret trick on the house itself.The careful way she steadied a stack of books, palms flat, exaggerated in its gentleness as though she believed the pages were made of glass.
Every damned detail dug deeper.
I told myself not to see it.Not to feel it.But the truth sat heavy in my chest: I was watching her.Wanting her.
And it terrified me.
Delight warred with fury, tangled so tight I could barely breathe.The sight of her made me feel like I was falling and being strangled at the same time—every breath stolen, every heartbeat sharper than the last.
Don’t do this.The words echoed like a drumbeat in my skull.Don’t want this.Don’t let this happen.
She was too bright for me, too whole, too alive.She deserved Sunday mornings and family dinners, not a man built of scars and ghosts.
But when she turned, catching me watching her, and smiled without hesitation—without fear—I knew the lie for what it was.
I already had let it happen.
And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop.
She laughed over a tangle of bulbs, head bent, hair slipping into her eyes as she wrestled the mess into something brighter.The sound filled the room, unbothered, free.
That was when the truth pressed down hardest.
She was young.Whole.Alive in ways I hadn’t been for years.She had a life outside these walls, a town that still opened its doors to her, a family waiting for her to come home.I could already picture the townsfolk when they learned she’d been here—their faces turning, mouths whispering.Pitying her.Mocking me.Why are you here, Belle?What business have you with the monster on the hill?
The thought made my stomach twist.
And then came the jagged shard, sharper than any blade: her father’s name inked in my books, scrawled like a ghost that never left.That memory wasn’t just war, wasn’t just the men we’d buried or the promises we’d broken overseas.
It was betrayal.
Because the man who’d walked away with my wife hadn’t just been another soldier.He’d been hers.The father the whole damn town respected, the one they raised glasses to, the one they’d never believe could gut another man’s life and leave him bleeding in the ashes.
He was the reason I’d built myself into something cold, something untouchable, something people whispered about instead of welcomed.
And still—still—I found myself wanting her.
The guilt crashed through me, brutal and illogical.Guilt for desiring her.Guilt for being nothing more than the son of my own trauma.Guilt that she might come to love the man whose life was ruined by the one who raised her.
It was wrong.It was twisted.
But when she looked up, smiling, untangling another knot with a triumphant laugh, all I could feel was the pull.
