“I’m not playing anything,” I snap, the frustration bursting out sharper than I meant. “I am an idiot, Grace. Look at us. Look at our family. Look at where we come from.”
I make a wide, helpless gesture, like I can somehow point to all the rot we left behind but still carry inside us.
“Dad’s a manipulative monster. Mom is… checked out, complicit, weak. Their entire relationship is a performance built on power, appearances, and control. It’s toxic. It’s poison.”
I lean my forearms on the windowsill, crossing my arms over my chest like I can shield myself from my own words.
“I’ve got their blood in my veins, Gracie. I don’t want to end up like them. I don’t want to drag someone else into that kind of hell. The last thing I want is a relationship that destroys whoever’s next to me.”
Silence drops over the room.
Grace studies me. There’s no fear in her eyes—just a sadness so deep it almost hurts to look at.
She gets up, lets the blanket slide off her shoulders, and walks toward me. She takes my hands.
Hers are small and warm.
“You are not like them,” she says, every word deliberate. “You’re the one who came to get me at a club at midnight and risked your career. You’re the one who took the blame for years to protect me. Dad would never do that. Ever.”
She squeezes my fingers.
“And do you seriously think that with a woman like Sloane you could ever have a relationship like our parents’?”
I huff out a bitter laugh. “Sloane would never let anyone walk all over her. Least of all me.”
“Exactly!” Grace crows, almost triumphant. “She’s strong. She’s tough. She calls you on your crap. She’s not a victim, Cohen. She’s a partner.”
She looks me dead in the eye, more serious than I’ve ever seen her.
“Don’t let Dad take this from you too. He already wrecked our childhood, wrecked our ability to trust people… don’t let him wreck your chance to be happy. Don’t let him win.”
Her words hit like open-handed slaps.
Don’t let him win.
I’ve spent my whole life fighting him, trying to be the opposite of everything he is, and somehow… somehow I’ve been avoiding love for years because I was terrified of repeating his mistakes.
I’m not even sure what mistakes I’m afraid of. Because honestly? I might be an asshole on a good day, but I’ve never cheated and never will. The idea alone makes my skin crawl.
But my father’s sins aren’t just about that.
He’s cold. Calculating. Obsessed with himself and his career. And my mother’s not much better. She tolerates it. She wants the show, the lifestyle, the surface-level perfection.
Sloane is… none of that.
My phone vibrates on the coffee table again.
Grace glances at it, then at me, chin tipping toward it.
Angel:If you show up tomorrow with your hair a mess, I’m having the first person I find shave your head.
I smile.
Yep. There it is again—that stupid grin.
Grace is right.
Sloane isn’t a woman I could “ruin.”
