Whatever came next, I would have to respect that—even if it meant learning how to live with the silence she had asked for.
I stared down at the glass in my hand, the silence at the bar stretching out.
Making mistakes had never been safe where I came from.
My father believed control was the same thing as strength. Discipline was constant. Expectations were clear. You did the right thing every time, or you accepted the consequences.
There was no room for hesitation. No room to misjudge. No room for the kind of impulsive decision that had just destroyed the most important relationship I had stumbled into.
Our pack had been small, but rigid. Every action reflected on the family. Every failure carried weight. When something went wrong, my father didn’t ask questions. He corrected it.
My shoulders tightened at the memory. My body still remembered the sting of those lessons even after all these years. The sound of a chair scraping across the floor. The heavy quietbefore the correction came. The expectation that I would stand there and take it because the mistake had been mine.
Pain had been simple.
You endured it. You learned. You adjusted your behavior so it never happened again.
That system had made sense to younger me. It had rules. Clear cause and effect. Clear paths to improvement.
What I was feeling tonight had no such structure. No rule to follow. No correction to make it right. All I knew was that I had crossed a line Zoey needed me to respect, and that the damage might not be repairable.
I turned the glass slowly in my hand.
If my father had been here tonight, the situation would have ended very differently. He would have delivered the lesson.
The pain would have passed.
The problem would have been closed.
Instead, I was sitting in a quiet bar, with a hollow feeling in my chest and the knowledge that the person I wanted most in the world had asked me not to contact her again.
I would have gladly taken a beating over this.
At least then there would have been something I could do about it.
Chapter 22
Zoey
The apartment wasquiet when I got up late on Tuesday morning. The same kitchen. The same small stack of dishes beside the sink. The same laptop sitting on the desk waiting for me to work.
Nothing had changed.
Except my brain would not stop replaying the look on Liam’s face when he left.
I started the coffee and leaned against the counter as the liquid dripped into the mug. My ankle had made enough of an improvement that I could stand comfortably again. The swelling had mostly disappeared, and the bruising had faded to an ugly yellow that suggested my body was almost done dealing with it.
The rest of me was not nearly as efficient.
I carried my mug into the living room and sat down on the couch.
Markie watched me from his perch.
He had been studying me for several minutes.
I could tell he was deciding whether or not to involve himself.
“Don’t,” I told him.
