The weight. The grief. The identity I’d been dragging behind me like a second spine. He didn’t ask me to drop it. He just stood there when I finally did.
Later that night, when he was brushing his teeth with a drugstore toothbrush and humming off-key, I stood leaning against the doorframe and watched the shadows move across my new bedroom.
It wasn’t beautiful. Not in the way I’d been raised to think beauty meant—no chandeliers, no velvet drapes, no sweeping view of the skyline.
But it was mine. Andthat was enough.
I slid into bed—just a mattress on the floor, nothing glamorous—and Sin climbed in beside me, hair still damp from his shower, smelling like peppermint and something that felt like home.
He didn’t say anything. Just curled up close, one arm across my stomach, and let the silence speak. My father would lose his mind when he found out. Let him. This life? My life. It wasn’t his to ruin anymore.
CHAPTER 28
THEO
It was too quiet in the apartment.
Sin had gone back to his place to check in with Thalia and Claire—something about potstickers or pot painting and trashy reality TV they pretended not to be obsessed with. I told him to go. Said it casually, like it didn’t matter. Like I wouldn’t rather have him here, pressed up against me on our creaky thrift-store couch, pretending we weren’t both afraid of the silence.
But I needed to learn how to have space now that I actually had it.
Still, when the door clicked shut behind him, the quiet that followed felt like a vacuum. Like something vital had been sucked out of the air.
I stood in the middle of the living room, surrounded by boxes and half-built furniture, staring at the chaos like it might rearrange itself if I looked hard enough. Sin had helped me haul in a coffee table from Facebook Marketplace, then talked me into rearranging the couch three different ways until we found the perfect angle to be able to sit and watch TV. Winston approved—or at least, he hadn’t sabotaged it yet. He was perched on the windowsill now, flicking his tail in silent judgment.
My phone buzzed for the fifth time in as many minutes. I didn’t need to check. I knew the drill.
My therapist said I had to set boundaries—that healing sometimes looked like silence. So I shoved the phone under a pillow and pressed it down like I was snuffing out a fire.
When the last lamp was finally plugged in, I collapsed onto the couch. Winston promptly abandoned his perch to sprawl across my chest, all purring warmth and steady weight. My heart thudded a little too hard beneath him.
I flicked through channels just to hear the noise. Nothing stuck. Infomercials. Crime dramas as old as the building. A rerun ofTrue Blood. I left it on. Thalia loved that show. Said it made being dramatic feel justified. I didn’t get it, but at least it didn’t require me to think.
I let my eyes fall closed. Just for a second. Let my body settle into the stillness. Something I was trying to learn was to just relax and not be riddled with anxiety until I was on the verge of imploding.
Then came the knock. Hard and insistent. I sat up so fast, Winston yowled and bolted. My pulse shot through me like a live wire.
No one knocks like that unless it’s something bad.
My first thought was him. My father. I imagined his shadow behind the door, imagined hands reaching through the gap to drag me back.
My fingers shook as I crept to the peephole.
It wasn’t him.
It was her.
My mother.
She stood in the hallway, hands clasped tightly in front of her, and she wasn’t alone. A man—older, maybe in his late sixties—stood beside her with a briefcase and kind eyes. Helooked like the type of man who said things like “let’s take this one step at a time.”
She must have sensed me. “Theo,” she said, her voice quiet, too careful. “Please. I just want to talk.”
Every instinct screamed for me to deadbolt the door and retreat into the safety of the silence. But there was something in her voice I hadn’t heard in years. Not a command. Not guilt. Just…hope.
I took a deep calming breath and opened the door.
She looked older. Not just in years, but in the kind of way time leaves when it scrapes someone raw. Her makeup was understated. Her posture wasn’t perfect. And her eyes—my eyes—looked like they’d run out of sleep weeks ago.
