We just held.
And in that hold, I felt it—the quake under his skin, the tremor he was trying to hide, the violence of whatever was inside him pressing against the walls of his body.
I pulled back just enough to see his face.
His eyes were glassy, furious, devastated.
“I—” He tried to speak, and whatever he meant to say collapsed.
So, I didn’t make him.
I reached up and cupped his jaw with both hands, forcing him to look at me, forcing his focus into the present.
“You don’t have to tell me yet,” I said softly. “You just have to let me be here.”
His throat worked.
A sound—raw and broken—escaped him.
Then he leaned forward and pressed his forehead to mine.
His hands slid down my arms, gripping my wrists like he needed to feel my pulse. My skin. My warmth.
And I let him.
Because this was what love looked like in his world.
Not flowers.
Not speeches.
This.
A man in ruins, choosing to reach for someone, anyway.
33
CONNOR
Iwas broken.
Not the way most people understood broken. Not visible. Not dramatic. Not the kind of damage you could point to and saythere, that's where it hurts.
But from the inside out. Like someone had taken a sledgehammer to the foundation of everything I thought I knew and left me standing on rubble, trying to pretend I could still support weight.
I'd always carried the grief of losing my parents. Had learned to live with it the way you learned to live with a scar—present but manageable, tender only when you pressed on it directly. Part of the landscape of who I'd become.
But now?
Now all I could see was Merrick at the funeral.
Standing there in his black suit that probably cost more than my parents made in a month, face appropriately somber, offering his fucking condolences like he gave a shit. Like he hadn't poured the gasoline himself. Like he hadn't lit the matchand watched. Like he hadn't stood across the street listening to my mother scream while the building came down.
And I'dbelievedhim.
Had shaken his hand with my own still trembling from crying. Had nodded when he said he was sorry for my loss, his voice so perfectly calibrated to sound genuine. Had let him stand among the other mourners—real mourners, people who'd actually known and loved my parents—like he had any right to be there.
Like he was human.
