“What?”
“I didn’t hide them,” I repeat. “I didn’t think you’d look.”
Silence.
Then his laugh comes again—louder this time, jagged, almost manic.
“Oh my god,” he says. “Oh my god.”
He rakes a hand through his hair, pacing now, the letters clenched in his fist like evidence.
“You didn’t think I’d look,” he repeats. “Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ.” He turns on me so fast I flinch. “Do you know what this says about you?” he demands. “Do you know how this makes you look?”
I shrug.
It’s small. Barely there.
But it enrages him.
“They’re from your stepbrother, Scarlett!” he shouts. “Your stepbrother. Do you understand how fucking disgusting that is?”
The word lands wrong.
Not because it’s untrue.
Because it’s irrelevant.
“Kai isn’t—” I start.
“No,” Noah cuts in sharply. “Don’t. Don’t you dare romanticise it.”
He slams the papers down again, flattening them with his palm.
“This isn’t poetic. This isn’t tragic. This is sick.” He leans in, eyes drilling into mine. “He writes about watching you sleep,” he says. “He writes about knowing what you taste like when you’re scared. He writes about carving his name into you like you’re fucking property.”
My pulse thunders.
“And you kept them,” he continues, quieter now. More dangerous. “You kept them.”
I meet his gaze.
“Yes.”
The word is soft.
Final.
Something snaps behind his eyes.
“You’re standing in my kitchen,” he says slowly, “wearing my shirt, cooking my food, while you keep letters from a man who wants to destroy us.”
I tilt my head.
“Did you read the part where he says you’re temporary?”
That’s the wrong thing to say.
He grabs my wrist, hard.
