“He is,” I agreed. “He’s everything I never thought I deserved.”
We sat together a while longer, the silence no longer sharp and punishing—but healing. Uneven. Real.
Later that night, after they left, I stood alone in the center of my apartment, every light off but one. The folder sat on the table. The trust. The truth. The ghost of everything I thought I knew.
I poured myself a glass of whiskey, then changed my mind and let the bottle kiss my lips.
The ice was finally cracking. All the lies. All the performances. The years I’d spent molding myself into something polished and perfect—just another pawn in his game. I’d never even seen it.
I didn’t cry. I just sat and listened to the hum of the city outside, to the silence pressing in, to the aching beat of my own heart as it tried to relearn its rhythm.
Sin’s face flashed through my mind—those wild eyes. That broken, beautiful unloved boy that lived in him. He’d seen me, the real me before I had. Maybe my mother was right and he really had saved me.
But still all my pieces didn’t fit. Not yet. Not fully. Eventually they would. I didn’t know who I was without my father’s shadow hanging over me. But maybe I was about to find out.
The door creaked open sometime after midnight. I didn’t stir, still half asleep. Not even as soft footfalls padded across the room, pausing at the edge of the couch.
A low chuckle broke through the quiet. “Well, look at this role reversal,” Sin murmured.
I blinked one eye open. The bottle of whiskey was still in my hand, warm from my grip. Winston had curled up on my chest, snoring like an old man, his paws twitching from some dream.
Sin crouched down beside me, brushing my hair back from my face. His fingers paused at my temple like he was checking to make sure I was real and breathing and here.
“You were waiting,” he said.
“Didn’t mean to fall asleep.” My voice was scratchy, my mouth dry.
He took the bottle from my hand and sniffed it, his nose wrinkling. “This smells like poison.”
“That’s because it is.”
Sin stood, the lamplight casting shadows across his sharp features, the bruises under his eyes fading slowly. He looked tired but more present than I’d seen him in days—like the storm in his head had slowed just enough for him to catch his breath. His voice was low, almost amused, but something softer lived beneath it. “Come on. You stink of regret and despair.”
I opened my mouth to snap back, but he didn’t give me the chance. His hand was already reaching for mine, firm and steady the way it always was when I felt like falling apart. Winston gave a soft whine as I moved, the weight of his head sliding from my chest like I was giving up something warm and good.
Sin didn’t speak as we walked down the hall, fingers laced together like it was a promise neither of us dared break. Thebathroom filled with steam as he turned the water up until it was punishing, nearly scalding. Not enough to boil out the shame still seeping through my skin.
He stepped in behind me, his body pressing flush against mine, arms encircling my waist like he could keep me from shattering just by holding me tight enough. My head dropped to his shoulder. I didn’t even realize how badly I’d wanted to be touched until his hands were on me—scrubbing my back, fingertips digging into the hard knots of tension tucked beneath my skin like they belonged there.
It wasn’t about sex. It was about survival. About not being alone in the echo chamber of my thoughts.
By the time we stumbled back into bed, damp and tangled, everything ached—but it was a different kind of pain now. The kind that comes after sobbing or screaming. The kind that says maybe you’re going to be okay if you could just stay still long enough to let it settle.
Sin’s voice was soft in the dark, breath warm against my ear. “Talk to me, baby.”
My throat tightened. My chest did that thing where it felt like I couldn’t breathe without breaking apart. I tried to roll away from him, but his arm looped around my waist, anchoring me in place.
“Don’t make me ask again,” he said, quieter this time. Less a demand, more a plea.
So I talked. I told him everything.
About my mother coming here, knocking on the door with a man I’d never seen before. How he turned out to be her lawyer. Told him about my father and his lies, his deals, the kind of man he really was. That he was most likely going to be facing prison time and my fear that I’d be pulled into all of it. How she was divorcing him and that I was sure it’d make the headlines like a disease. About the trust my grandpa had set up for me that Ihadn’t looked at yet, because I was scared—scared the number would be too high, that it would make Sin look at me differently. That he’d see the money and think I’d lied when I said this was a new start for us.
Then I sobbed quietly as I told him about mom and what she’d said. About how my father had manipulated her and caged her just like me. That he’d used her and lied to her about what happened when I was fifteen. Tears fell down my cheeks as I baptized myself in truth.
Sin didn’t interrupt. He just listened patiently. One hand stayed steady on my chest, the other laced with mine under the covers. His thumb moved in slow, grounding circles over my skin.
When I finished, the silence was thick. I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. Fear had made a home in my mind.
