That was the part that kept looping in my head, louder than the guilt, louder than the donor threats, louder than the wordhypocritescrolling through comment threads I’d forced myself to stop reading.
He would change pieces of his life for me.
Not all of it. Not who he was. But enough.
And I hated that the thought made my chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with want.
I rolled onto my side, pulled my knees up, tried to make myself small. It didn’t help. The bed felt too big, the room too empty, the city outside too indifferent. Charleston had always been mine—my streets, my rhythms, my carefully curated corners. Now every corner felt like it belonged to someone else. To him. To the version of me that had let him in.
My phone buzzed again.
I turned it over before I could stop myself.
Cassian.
Not a call. A text. One line.
You’re safe. Sleep, if you can.
No demand to come back. No guilt trip. No possessive edge.
Just that.
I stared at the words until they blurred.
Then I typed back before the impulse could pass.
I’m not sleeping.
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
Do you want company?
My thumb hovered.
I thought of Eleanor’s email. Thomas Price’s threat. The reporter’s voicemail. The comments calling me a sellout, a fraud, a woman who’d traded principles for a rich man’s bed.
I thought of my mother in that hotel lobby, letting Daniel kiss her like she was finally allowing herself to be claimed.
I thought of the letter I’d sent to Alpha Mail all those weeks ago—the one that had started with exhaustion and ended with surrender.
I typed one word.
Yes.
I hit send before I could second-guess it.
Twenty-three minutes later, the doorbell rang.
I didn’t run to it. I walked. Slow. Deliberate. Like I was crossing a line I’d drawn myself and could still erase if I changed my mind.
When I opened the door, he was standing there in the hallway light—dark jacket, hair slightly damp from the mist that had started falling outside, eyes steady but shadowed.
He didn’t speak first.
I did.
“You didn’t ask if I was sure.”
