Chapter 42
It’s been two weeks. Two weeks we’ve lived in peace. Fucking, training, more fucking, licking, sucking each other and so on. Freedom feels good. I’ve never felt this way before.
He taught me how to handle a blade. Well … most of the time, we ended up doing more than just training, but I’ll admit, I got pretty good at it. Makes me feel like a badass and more confident.
Grayson is an absolute cutie. He never asks questions, even though, for some reason, I think he knows everything. He accepts Adam the way he is, without asking or wanting anything in return. He takes care of us like a father, despite Adam trying to cut him off.
He holds grudges in him, and that’s fine. That’s who he is. He won’t admit how much he needs a father figure to take care of him like he’s never been taken care of.
This house feels like a fortress. It’s more reinforced than mine, and I feel safe here. The kitchen is quiet—quieter than mine—and it always smells like the most delicious food I’ve ever had. Grayson is great at everything.
I look outside the window at the sunny day and can’t help but think about how peaceful everything feels. For once, my mind is quiet, and I’m exactly where I want to be.
“What a view,” Adam quips, walking into the room.
“Indeed. This room has the best one,” I reply, biting on my apple.
He comes up behind me while I’m sitting on the stool, pinning me between the table and his body. His eyes lock onto mine.
“I meant you, little orchid.”
He takes a bite from my apple, his gaze never leaving mine.
“You’re such an asshole,” I joke.
He smirks. “You like me anyway.”
I chuckle, unable to resist his annoying charm.
“How did I end up in this mess?” I say, shaking my head. “Trapped in an asshole’s house and apparently getting way too comfortable about it.”
“The only difference is that now, after such training, you can kick my ass.”
He’s something else.
I have to admit, he’s the best teacher I’ve ever had. I’ve learned things from him that changed me. Well, when we don’t fuck in the middle of the gym.
He lets out a long sigh. He’s suddenly solemn. I’ve never seen him like this again.
“I never apologized,” he says, his eyes meeting the floor.
My brows knit together. “For what?”
“Hurting you.”
I give him a small, steady smile. “I’m fine, aren’t I?”
“I’m not.” He pulls the stool next to mine and sits close to me. “It’s this fucking house. I haven’t had nightmares in years, but the second I set foot in this shithole, they came back.”
I don’t speak. I let him explain in his own way, even if it’s messy. Even if it hurts.
He hesitates again, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“My … Mother, uhm.” He lets out a long sigh. “She was sick.”
“Sick how?”
“I didn’t know back then, but growing up, I realized that Father had her on a steady diet of pills. No wonder she lost herself.”
“Oh my God,” I gasp, unable to believe the disgusting action.
“I don’t know if she was already crazy before that, but by the time I was born, she was beyond reach.” His eyes sink to the floor, as if he’s ashamed to look up. “She didn’t love me. She couldn’t. Whatever she was, it wasn’t a mother anymore.”
“Why do you think that?” I ask, my eyes welling up.
“She loved them—the others. I knew it because I watched it, rotting with jealousy.” He lets out a hollow laugh. “I used to sneak into her room like a stray, begging for a glance, a word, anything. She never gave me shit.”
He shakes his head slowly. “I remember the sadness … that fucking, soul-crushing sadness when she told me she didn’t love me.
” His voice thins. “I didn’t believe her.
I couldn’t. What kind of fucked-up world asks a seven-year-old boy to understand that his own mother looks at him and feels nothing? ”
“I’m so sorry,” I mumble as tears finally consume me.
He jerks his head, eyes hollow and wounded. “When I grew up, I changed my last name.”
I hesitate. “Mitch?” That was a dumb question.
His eyes snap on mine. “Manson.”
“Manson isn’t your father’s last name?”
“Nope. My father was a Ford. My mother was a Manson.” His jaw tightens.
“My brother took her name. He said he wanted something to remember his precious mommy by.” A bitter laugh slips out.
“I guess I wanted the same. A reminder. A fucking scar I could wear, so I’d never forget where the rot came from. ”
My heart is hammering, and my head is splitting apart. I didn’t know—God, I didn’t know. I wish I had. I wish he hadn’t been forced to drag it all back into the light in front of me. Hearing it feels like watching someone reopen a wound that never healed, just to prove it was real.
“You know …” He lets out a cracked laugh. “Despite all that shit, I still spent years making excuses for her in my head. Even after I wished she’d die. Even after I caught myself smiling when she finally did.”
He swallows hard. “At her funeral, everyone played their little grieving show. Only Cain and Grayson were actually broken.”
“And what about you?”
“Relieved. Disgustingly, unforgivably relieved.” His jaw tightens. “And still … I took her name. Like a sick joke I played on myself. Like I needed to keep her poison in my blood, so I’d never forget what she made me.”
I want to hold him until the anger shakes itself out of his bones.
I want to kiss him and tell him he’s wrong.
So damn wrong. That he isn’t her failure, her cruelty, her poison.
That whatever she saw, whatever she tried to carve into him, didn’t stick the way she wanted.
He’s not what she believed, and he’s sure as hell not what she tried to make him believe.
He survived her. And that alone proves she was wrong.
“I grew up hating my father,” he says, voice tight and venomous. “Hating him for being the worst kind of monster I’d ever met. A manipulator. A sadistic piece of shit. A fucking demon wearing a human face.”
He exhales sharply, like it hurts to keep going.
“For years, he was my Satan. The villain. The easy one to blame. But then I got older, and I realized I hated my mother more. Because she’s the one who made me this.
Her neglect. Her absence. Her complete, goddamn failure to be a mother to her own child. ”
He laughs once.
“He broke her. But she broke me.”
My heart aches for him. It hurts to see him like this—but worse than that, it hurts knowing it’s all real, that it’s still clawing its way through his mind after all these years.
I’d made my peace with being unloved by my parents. I’d learned how to live with that hollow space. At least, I think I did.
But he hasn’t. He’s still reaching backward, still starving for her approval, still desperate for something—anything—to tie him to her. Even now, even after everything, part of him is still that child begging to be seen, and that’s what breaks me the most.
He’s just a neglected kid who spent his whole life chasing his mother’s attention even after she died. Not even her love. Just proof that he existed to her.
Just like me.
That’s the cruelest part. You don’t outgrow that hunger. You just learn how to carry it quieter. You tell yourself you’re fine, that you’ve accepted it, that it doesn’t hurt anymore, until you see it bleeding out of someone else and realize it never really left.
He lifts his hand and cups my face.
“I hurt people,” he admits quietly. “On purpose. I’ve turned into something fucked up. Something that feeds on fear just to feel alive. It keeps the rot quiet for a while.” His thumb brushes my cheek, reverent. “But I would never hurt you. Not intentionally. Never.”
His voice cracks. “You’re the only place where the noise stops. The only place where I don’t feel monstrous.” His forehead rests against mine. “My refuge. My heaven. The one thing I still know how to protect.”
His lips brush mine, and my body reacts before I can think. Every nerve tightens, like something in me has been waiting to be touched this way.
This is it. This is all I ever wanted. That kind of connection that rewires you quietly, then dares you to live with the consequences.
I’ve always wanted someone who wouldn’t stop when things got hard. Someone who wouldn’t try to fix me or make me easier to handle. Someone who knows what this costs and chooses it anyway.
“You’re my refuge, Adam. My sanctuary.”
He looks at me like he’s placing his life in my hands.
“I feel safe with you.” I hold his gaze. “No matter what darkness you carry, I’ll stand in it with you. And if you lose the light, I’ll be it.”
His eyes soften.
“Even if the choice costs us everything, I’d still make it beside you,” I continue. “If you fall, I fall.”
“Oh, fuck,” he mumbles.
His lips capture mine in a fervent kiss. He slides between my legs, his hands wrapping around my waist as he pulls me in, holding me tightly.
He pulls away just a few inches and looks at me.
“Falling never felt so easy.”
The doorbell rings, but neither of us cares. Someone else will open it.
“Adam?” Grayson interrupts us, his voice shallow.
“What is it?”
“It was a delivery guy at the door.”
Adam tilts his head forward, waiting. “And?”
“He brought something for you.”
Two weeks in peace. That’s all we deserved.
I’m a fool to have believed it would last.
His eyes dart between mine and Grayson’s. “Who knows I’m here?”
“You should check it out yourself.”
My stomach knots. I walk toward the door, knowing that something waits for us there, something that will fracture what we have.
Adam drops to his knees and opens the package.
My breath catches at the sight of what’s inside.
“No,” I mumble.
“Fucking coward,” Adam hisses.
Inside the box—
No …
A hand. A man’s hand, severed at the wrist. The eagle tattoo on the back leaves no room for doubt.
Wes’s hand.