Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
Litany of Ruin and Reverence
The silence is the worst part.
It wraps around me like barbed wire, snagging on old wounds I thought I’d stitched shut. Cain hasn't said a word since we came upstairs. Not one. Not a look. Not a touch. Just that quiet tension radiating off him like a storm crouched low to the ground, waiting to strike.
My chest feels too tight. My ribs too small. Each breath shallow and sharp.
He's mad. Of course he's mad. I froze. Again. Couldn’t even defend Hank. Couldn’t stand my ground. Couldn't speak. Just stood there like a damn porcelain doll, letting my past puppet me.
I dig my nails into my palms to ground myself, but it doesn’t help. Not really. My thoughts keep circling the same drain—spiraling down into that black little pit I try so hard to crawl out of. The one that whispers you’re weak. You’re broken. He saw it. He knows it now.
That panic—slick and bitter—blooms. Not loud. Not frantic. Just heavy. Cold. Quiet. The kind of fear that doesn’t scream… it seeps.
I move like I’m walking through molasses. Slow. Careful. Quiet.
The guest room feels colder now, like I don’t belong here—or maybe like I never really did. Most of my things have already crept into Cain’s room over the past few weeks. A slow migration of trust I didn’t even realize I was making.
But a few pieces of me are still here. My sneakers. A couple shirts folded neatly in the dresser. My beat-up backpack leaning against the wall like it’s ready to run.
I pack without thinking, each item a small defeat. A whispered apology I don’t say out loud.
I’m sorry I froze.
I’m sorry I made you step in.
I’m sorry I let that look slip into your eyes—the one that sees me as breakable.
The zipper sounds loud in the silence. I wince at it. My hands are trembling, just a little. I press my palm flat against the fabric, trying to steady my breath.
I hate how heavy this feels. How familiar this retreat is. I hate that I’m already building a story in my head where I’m the burden. The disappointment. The one who ruins the good thing.
Because Cain hasn’t said a word. And silence from someone like him? It doesn’t feel like peace.
It feels like the prelude to a storm.
I creep past the living room like a ghost in my own skin.
Cain’s on the couch, elbows on his knees, fingers laced, head down like he’s praying—or plotting. I can’t tell. He doesn’t look up. Doesn’t move. Just breathes like the air’s trying to choke him.
The weight of his silence carves a hollow space in my chest.
I slip into his bedroom and close the door behind me without a sound.
The room smells like him—clove smoke and cedar and something darker.
Wilder. The sheets are still tangled from last night.
My jeans hang on the back of his chair. One of my bras is curled next to the lamp.
My face cream is on the dresser. My toothbrush in the holder.
This is my room now.
Or it was.
My throat tightens. I fold my clothes, my things, my heart. Pack it all away like it never lived here. Like I never hoped too hard.
I don’t cry. I don’t breathe too loudly. I just move with practiced quiet, the kind you learn from years of trying not to make a man angrier.
Cain’s not like them.
But the silence still stings. And I still pack.
I tighten the strap of the duffel over my shoulder, knuckles white. The weight isn’t much—just the scraps I hadn’t already spilled into his world. But it drags like penance as I step out of the guest room.
Cain’s still on the couch. Silent. Still. Like stone that might crack if I breathe too loud.
I stop in front of him, heart thudding behind my ribs like it wants out. Like it can’t take the silence either.
“I’m gonna go,” I say, and it barely makes it out. My voice is all air, no strength. “Tonight.”
His gaze doesn’t lift. Doesn’t flinch.
I push the words out anyway, teeth clenched between the tremble. “I just… I wanted to say thank you. For everything. For letting me stay here. For keeping me safe when I couldn’t even keep myself together.”
My throat burns. I blink fast, swallowing down the sob like it’s poison.
“I know I messed up tonight. Froze up like some goddamn coward while you—while Hank—”
I stop. My lip wobbles, and I clamp it down with my teeth. A shaky inhale.
“I won’t be your burden. Not after everything you’ve done.”
I shift the bag higher, trying to make myself small again, invisible and easy to forget. Easy to walk away from. “I’m sorry I ruined it. I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough.”
Finally, I look at him.
“I’ll go.”
He stands. The motion is slow. Controlled. But something sharp hums beneath it.
“You think I’m silent because I’m mad at you?”
His voice cuts through the air like a blade—low, lethal, laced with disbelief. Like the idea alone is an insult.
My breath stutters.
He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. Just heat. Just something dangerous.
“No, little rabbit,” he says, stepping closer. His voice drops lower, dipped in venom and reverence all at once. “I’m silent because it’s taking everything in me not to hunt that boy down.”
He looks at me then, really looks, and I swear the whole room tilts under the weight of it.
“He disrespected Hank. He disrespected my bar.”
His eyes flicker—dark fire now, barely banked.
“But worst of all,” he growls, “he disrespected you.”
He takes another step. My duffel slips off my shoulder.
“He hurt you. He scared you. He made you feel small again.”
His jaw tightens. “And I told you—I’m not a good man, Mags.” Then softer, closer now, like a prayer against the sin. “I only know how to be good to you.”
He circles me. Slow. Like a storm calculating landfall. Like a wolf deciding whether to devour or worship.
His fingers ghost over my arm—just the backs of his knuckles, brushing light as ash. A reverent not-touch. His lips hover near the shell of my ear, but he doesn’t kiss. Doesn’t rush. Just breathes damnation into me.
“I keep thinking about how he looked at you,” he murmurs, voice low enough to raise the dead. “How close he got. The way he grinned like he’d already earned the right to your fear.”
A breath drags hot against my jaw, and I forget how to stand upright.
“I want to find that boy,” he continues, circling behind me now, hand grazing the curve of my waist, “drag him into an alley and see how many teeth he screams through before he begs.”
My pulse hammers. He doesn’t stop.
“Wanna paint the pavement with the scent he wore. Make sure he never forgets what it feels like to choke on someone else’s power.”
His fingers trail the hem of my shirt, not lifting it—just resting there. Like a prayer on the edge of blasphemy.
“He made you flinch,” Cain says, voice rough with something ancient and holy and savage. “He made you small. And I’ll never forgive him for that.”
He leans in, lips just over mine now. So close I taste the smoke of his wrath.
“I don’t want to kiss you yet,” he whispers. “Not until every part of you remembers you’re not that girl anymore.”
Then, softer. Like grace wrapped in violence:
“You’re mine. And I don’t let what’s mine bleed without consequence.”
His fingers hook into the waistband of my jeans, slow and reverent, like he’s peeling away my shame and dressing me in vengeance.
“I’m not quiet because I’m mad at you,” he says again, voice low and unshaken as thunder before the storm. “I’m quiet because I can already see it. The moment I find him.”
He slides the denim down my thighs like he’s undressing a relic—like I’m carved of stone and soaked in sanctity.
“I’ll start with his knees. One at a time. Take the height he used to look down on you. Then I’ll break his jaw for the words he dared to speak in your presence.”
My breath stutters. His hands are worship and war, dragging over my skin like they’re etching a gospel into my bones.
“I won’t kill him right away,” Cain murmurs, mouth brushing over my stomach—not kissing, just branding me with breath. “Not until he knows exactly why. Until he begs the same way you did—except no one will come for him.”
My knees buckle, but he catches me. Holds me up with steady hands like I’m something holy.
“You think I don’t remember what it’s like to feel small?” he whispers at my throat, lips ghosting just above the place where my pulse hammers. “To feel the world tilt under someone else’s voice?”
Another soft, maddening kiss—just below my ear. “But they made the mistake of leaving a god in the gutter. And now I’m yours.”
He pulls my shirt over my head and drops it like ash to the floor.
“I am not your salvation, Magdalena. I’m your reckoning. Your ruin. Your holy fire.”
He spreads my thighs and sinks to his knees again.
“When I see him—and I will—I’ll offer no mercy.”
A kiss, soft as a hymn, placed right between my legs.
“But you?” he breathes. “You’ll only ever know my devotion.”
He lifts me like I’m weightless. Like I’m already forgiven.
One arm under my thighs, the other wrapped around my back, possessive and sure. My body fits into his. He walks with that calm, steady rage—the kind that doesn’t shout, doesn’t rush. The kind that executes.
“You think tonight proved you’re weak?” he mutters, eyes on mine, voice low and sharp enough to carve commandments into stone. “No, little sinner. Tonight showed me how much you still need to be reminded who you are.”
He kicks the bedroom door open with his boot like we’re entering sacred ground. He lays me down like I’m the last page of his bible—careful, reverent, ready to be rewritten in sin.
“You’re not some helpless woman anymore. You’re mine. And that makes you dangerous.”
He kisses the inside of my thigh. Slow. Heated. Desperate, like he’s starving and I’m sacrament.
“You held your breath to survive. But now you breathe because of me. Because I gave you this fire back.”
His hands slide up, fingers dragging heat over my ribs, my waist, until they’re under me—holding me as he kisses the skin beneath my breast, murmuring into me like prayer and blasphemy are the same thing.