We work in silence for a while.
It's nice, having someone beside me who doesn't expect anything.
Who just... exists in the same space.
"Can I ask you something?" I say eventually.
"Shoot."
"How did you do it? When you first came here, I mean. How did you figure out where you fit?"
Tildie's quiet for a moment, considering. "I didn't. Not for a long time. I just... kept showing up. Kept being useful. Eventually, it stopped feeling like I was pretending and started feeling like home."
"That simple?"
"That hard." She bumps my shoulder with hers. "But you've got something I didn't have. You've got history here. You were Bloodhound's wife before everything went sideways. People remember that. They remember who you used to be."
"What if I can't be that person again?"
"Then be someone new. Someone better." She takes the last dish from my hands and dries it carefully. "That's what I did. The Tildie who walked into this clubhouse isn't the same Tildie standing here now. I'm a work in progress. We all are."
I want to believe her.
I want to believe that I can shed the skin of who I've been and become someone worthy of this second chance.
But there's a voice in the back of my head—my mother's voice, maybe, or just the addiction whispering—that says I'm fooling myself.
That people don't really change.
That sooner or later, I'll prove everyone right.
I push the voice down. Lock it away. One day at a time.
The confrontation with Venus happens three days later.
I'm in the common room, curled up on one of the leather couches with a book I'm not really reading, when she walks in.
She's wearing tight jeans and a low-cut top, her hair perfectly styled, her makeup flawless.
Everything about her screams effort—the kind of effort you put in when you're trying to prove something.
She stops when she sees me.
For a moment, we just look at each other. "So," she says finally. "You're back. For good this time?"
"I'm back."
"Must be nice." She moves to the bar, pours herself a drink even though it's barely noon. "Disappear for five years, fuck up over and over again, and still get to waltz back in like nothing happened."
I close my book. "I'm not pretending nothing happened."
"No?" She takes a long sip, her eyes never leaving mine. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you've got it pretty good. Nice room. Doting husband. Baby on the way." Her lips curl. "Meanwhile, some of us wereactuallyhere. Holding things together. Keeping him company on all those lonely nights."
The words hit exactly where she wants them to.
I think about Garrett's confession—the years they spent together while I was gone.
Physical, he said.
