Me. The boy who walked into that office and found the worst thing a son can find, and has been running from it ever since.
Aoife pulls me against her. Holds on. Doesn't say a word.
Doesn't tell me it's okay. Doesn't promise it'll get better. Doesn't offer any of the empty shit people throw at grief to make themselves feel useful.
She just holds me.
Her hand in my hair. Her heartbeat against my temple. Steady and slow and alive while I fall to pieces against her.
I cry until there's nothing left. Until I'm hollowed out and too exhausted to produce another sound. Until the only thing I can feel is her fingers moving through my hair.
Father is gone from the corner. I don't know when he left.
"Sleep," Aoife whispers. "I'm not going anywhere."
I do.
Day three is quieter. Worse in different ways.
The shaking eases. The vomiting stops. My heart finds something closer to a normal rhythm. Still too fast, but no longer the panicked gallop of the first two days.
The fever breaks sometime around noon.
But the cravings come alive.
Not the desperate physical need. This is something deeper. Psychological. A voice in the back of my skull that sounds nothing like Father and everything like me, whispering that one line won't hurt. That I've earned it. That the pain will stop and the world will sharpen and everything will feel manageable again.
Just a few hours. That's all I need.
Except it's never a few hours. It's never one line. One becomes two, becomes a bag, becomes a week lost in a fog while the world burns around me.
I know this. I've lived it.
And still the voice whispers.
I stare at the ceiling. Aoife is in the chair. I don't know how long she's been there. Don't know how long any of this has been. But I can see the exhaustion in the shadows under her eyes, the way her shoulders slump. She looks wrecked. Almost as bad as I do.
She did this for me. A woman who's known me for days. A woman I suspected of being a traitor. A woman I let believe her brother was dead.
"Why?" I ask. My voice is a ruin.
She lifts her head. "Why what?"
"Why are you doing this? Why didn't you just leave?"
She thinks about it. Actually thinks, not reaching for some rehearsed answer.
"Because you would have crawled to that bedroom and found nothing. And then you'd have torn this house apart looking for more. And when there wasn't any, you'd have found your way to the city. A dealer. A bar." She pauses. "And eventually, soon, you'd have taken too much."
"So it's strategic. Can't let the alliance fall apart."
"Don't." Her voice sharpens. "I'm not here because of a fucking contract, William."
The words land somewhere I don't have defenses for.
"I read your journals," she says again. Quieter. "You're not what they think you are. You're not what you think you are."
I look at her for a long time. The woman who called me late to my own engagement. Who slapped me across the face and kissed me against the SUV on the same night. Who hasn't left that chair since I hit the floor.
