“I never talk about this.” His silence gave her permission to keep going.
“My father was the most dangerous kind of man,” she said, voice steady, though rough at the edges. “The kind who thought nothing could touch him. He dealt drugs, not just to survive, but because he was hooked on what he sold.”
She stared into her drink, the light catching in slow, smoky spirals.
“That place, whatever it was, it never felt like home. It was a revolving door for hollow eyes and desperate hands. I learned early how to disappear, how to stay small and unnoticed, but…”
She met his gaze.
“It didn’t always work.”
Gideon didn’t speak. He didn’t have to.
“One of them. Someone I should’ve been able to trust. He confirmed every fear. He wasn’t a stranger. He was close. Too close.”
Her voice cracked but didn’t break. “He waited until we were alone. Didn’t leave bruises. No evidence. But he left a mark I couldn’t scrub off.”
Her fingers tightened around the glass.
“I froze. My mind just… went blank. And after, I hated myself for it. For not screaming. For not fighting. For letting him make me feel like I was nothing. And it wasn’t rape, not technically. But it was a violation. Of trust. Of safety. Of everything.”
The quiet wrapped around them—not with judgment, but room to breathe.
“I never told anyone. What would I have said? That someone touched me wrong? That I was scared all the time? There was no proof. How do you explain the way you tense every time someone moves too close? Or how you live waiting for it to happen again?”
She let out a shaky breath, holding the edges of her voice together by force.
“My grandparents were the only light in that house. My granddad’s arm on my shoulders, my grandma’s laugh echoing through the kitchen. They gave me something to hold onto. But when they died, that was taken from me too.”
She set the glass down, hands trembling.
“After that, I thought if I could just be perfect, it would keep me safe. Perfect grades. Perfect silence. Perfect obedience. But it never mattered. He always found something to punish. Some perceived wrongdoing. And the worst part wasn’t the punishment, but the waiting for it. The silence that came before the next blow, the next storm.”
Her voice softened, laced with something bitter.
“My mother… she wasn’t a mother. She was a shell. Every breath she took was for him. She waited on him like he was some god. Like keeping him happy was the only thing keeping us alive.”
Arden swallowed hard.
“I used to think she’d wake up. That every time he went to jail, she’d take that as a sign to finally leave. But she never did. She called it love. I called it survival. And eventually, I realized I had to choose one or the other.”
She looked up. The glassy sheen in her eyes didn’t dull their fire.
“So I walked away. I cut ties. I left it all behind. And people say that’s selfish. That I abandoned my family. But it wasn’t selfish.”
Her voice sharpened.
“It was necessary. Because if I’d stayed, it wouldn’t have been just my life I gave up. It would’ve been everything that made me.”
Gideon leaned closer, his words anchored. “You didn’t deserve any of that. Not the fear. Not the silence. Not the betrayal.”
She blinked, those words slicing straight through whatever armor she had left.
“Arden, you’ve faced worse than most ever will, and you’re here. Still standing. Still burning.”
She looked at him—this man who didn’t see someone broken. He saw fire. Not fracture.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “For listening. For not flinching.”
