“You don’t know that, Silas,” she says. Hearing my name break in her mouth like that does something unfixable to my chest. “They knew about me. About you.”
They did.
That is the part that terrifies me the most. Not just that somebody reached for her. That they reached for both of us at once. Like our histories run along the same filthy road. Like the men who damaged us belonged to the same circles, drank in the same rooms, traded in the same rot.
“Something tells me those fucking pervs all ran in the same crowds,” I murmur, the hatred in my voice a living thing. “My father was no better than your mother.”
The second I say her name, she folds harder into me.
“My mom,” she chokes out. “God, I fucking hate her, but they have her body…”
The grief in that sentence is impossible to untangle. Hate, horror, guilt and the sick, involuntary bond that exists no matter what kind of mother she was. They dug up the woman who made her life hell and somehow still found a way to make that desecration hurt her worse than if they’d come for a stranger.
“Shh,” I whisper, pressing her head down against my chest so she can hear my heart and maybe anchor herself to something alive. My fingers move through her hair again and again in slow, repetitive strokes, the only rhythm I have to offer her besides my breathing. “There is nothing in this world that will hurt you so long as I am alive.”
The promise is too big. I know it is. I say it anyway.
Because the truth underneath it is bigger.
“I lost you once,” I say against the top of her head. “I will never lose you again.”
That sentence lives in me like a vow and a wound at the same time. I didn’t know where she ended up after I was dragged out of her room at Brightside. Didn’t know whether she healed or broke or disappeared into some version of herself the world made smaller. Then she walked back into my life under a different roof with a scar on her cheek and the same impossibleheart. Now that I’ve found her again, the idea of anything taking her from me feels less like fear and more like madness.
She nuzzles deeper into my chest, her tears warm on my skin.
“I’m scared, Silas.”
The confession nearly undoes me.
God, I know.
I know because I am too. I am so fucking scared I can feel it in my bones. One wrong move and whoever is behind this gets closer. One wrong move and the old violence in me makes things worse instead of better. One wrong move and I fail her in the exact way every man in her life has failed her before.
But she doesn’t need my fear.
She needs my arms around her. My body between hers and the world.
So I hold her tighter.
My mouth finds her temple, then the corner of her forehead, then her damp cheek. Little kisses, quiet ones, each of them meant less to arouse than to remind.
I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.
Then she says something that cracks me open all over again.
“I think,” she whispers, her voice so small, I almost don’t hear it, “you’re the first person who has truly loved me. All of me. Damaged and all.”
For a second I can’t answer.
Because no one should have to say that like a revelation. No one should have to discover love this late, this bruised, this unsure of whether they are even allowed to believe what it feels like. The thought of all the hands that touched her before mine, all the mouths that used her, all the eyes that looked at her damage and saw invitation or burden or opportunity, makes grief and rage rise together so fast I have to swallow before I speak.
Slipping my hand from her hair to her face, I tip her chin up carefully until she looks at me.
“No,” I whisper. “Not damaged and all.”
She blinks at me through wet lashes, confused.
“All of you,” I say. “Not in spite of it. Not because I’m overlooking it. All of you. The hurt parts. The angry parts. The soft parts. The girl who survived. The woman who still loves too hard after everything the world taught her.” My thumb drags gently beneath her eye, catching the fresh tears there. “I love all of you because all of you is you.”
