Page 51 of Break Me Gently

“Where have you been for five years?” she whispered, her eyes welling up.

I shrugged, throat too tight to manage anything else.

She closed her eyes, and tears slipped free, trailing silently down her cheeks.

“We missed you so much. We used to talk about you and Dad all the time,” she said, opening her eyes again, holding my gaze steady with hers. “You always have a place here.”

“I see that now,” I said, wiping her cheeks dry with my thumbs, my own vision blurring at the edges. “I see it in the room Isabella kept for me. The one she never let go of.”

The pale blue and navy paint was exactly the same as I’d left it. Every poster, every old trophy, every scrap of who I used to be had been carefully packed away—not thrown out, not painted over, not erased—but folded and stored with something that looked suspiciously like love, tucked into the chest of drawers and closet, waiting for the day I might actually come home.

It felt like the dirty secret I’d held in my heart for years was finally out in the open, laid bare in front of the one person who mattered most to me.

“I love you, Amber Rayne,” I whispered, before capturing her sweet lips.

I’d still kiss them when they were covered in my cum.

It must be love.

Chapter 27

Amber

Everything was changing. Mum came back from her honeymoon glowing, and after a few more days, Zach left for Oxford. I’d be moving in with Luke for a few months before I left for uni. Mum’s glow wasn’t just from the tan.

She was so proud of her little bump it made me want to cry. Then we all went to her twelve-week scan and saw the baby for the first time. There was a limit on how many people could go in, so Zach and I stayed behind in the waiting room, flicking through outdated magazines and pretending not to be nervous. But we got to see the picture before anyone else did—a tiny, grainy shape on glossy paper that somehow made the whole thing feel real in a way it hadn’t before.

I’m fairly sure Zach was only pretending to hate Luke at this point, since he’d stopped calling the baby the anti-Christ.

Then Luke bought me a new car.

That set Zach off again.

I tried to explain the car was a joint gift from Mum and Luke, but he wasn’t having any of it. He told me to return it, and I laughed so hysterically he never brought it up again. As if I was going to say no to a brand-new BMW.

He did pitch me some more scripture about obedience, delivered with a completely straight face, like he actually expected it to work on me at this point. I was beginning to understand relationships—or at least how to manage one with Zach specifically.

Since Zach had already outed our relationship status to the entire internet, Alisha’s accusations fell flat and never gained any real traction. She was too thick to become a proper stalker anyway. Mum’s stalker could’ve given her a few tips on commitment.

Luke had his people watching Sadie closely. But you couldn’t predict crazy, so Mum got a bodyguard too. Building a criminal case against a stalker wasn’t simple—the laws existed on paper, but they meant little if the police weren’t properly trained to handle cases like hers.

Mum was lucky Luke was loaded.

March made way for April. Spring was my favourite season.

Then there was the Easter break.

I stared at the selfie of all four of us, smiling into the camera.

What a disaster.

❧ ❧ ❧

The tension in the room was palpable. Worse, even, than the day Mum found out about us. I glanced at my mum, who shook her head and rolled her eyes before returning to tapping away on her phone. Probably Rhea, or one of those mind-numbing matching games she’d gotten addicted to.

“Your grey hair must be impacting your grey cells, Dad,” Zach chuckled.

“Just pick a word already, Luke,” Mum said, without looking away from her glowing screen.