Chapter 48
He stood on the walkway in front of his mother’s house longer than he needed to.
The evening air was cool, carrying the scent of cut grass and the distant, sweet smell of a neighbor’s lilacs.
A single porch light cast a weak, yellow glow on the flagstone path, the light inside the house warm and unwavering.
He hadn’t been back since the night everything cracked open, since the truth about Derrick had been dragged into the light and left there between them, ugly and unfinished.
Back then, it had nearly destroyed him. Now it barely registered. Derrick might have been there when he was conceived, but his father was Edward Gatlin. That truth was settled. Nothing about genetics would ever touch it.
What hadn’t settled was the rest. He couldn’t stay in his own place any longer, pacing and replaying what he’d lost with Blair, questioning every decision until the silence started to feel dangerous.
He kept replaying his last moments with her, the look in her eyes when he’d pushed her away.
He’d done it to protect her, he told himself.
But standing in the suffocating quiet of his own place, a different truth surfaced.
He was pushing her away because that’s what he was taught to do.
His mother had been terrified that loving him, a reminder of what she’d lost, would destroy her.
Deep down, he was terrified that loving Blair would destroy her.
The cycle was right there. Silence and distance passed down like a legacy.
He couldn't break it with Blair until he understood its origin.
He knew what real love was. Blair had shown him.
It was a force, a choice, a terrifying and beautiful surrender.
It wasn't a transaction based on pain and fear.
That was his mother's love, not his. What he needed to understand was why.
Why was he given the lesson in conditional love instead of the unconditional kind he saw in his father?
Why was he taught to build walls when all he ever wanted was a home?
The only way to understand that was to finally, brutally, dissect the two loves that made him.
He needed answers, or at least the truth spoken out loud.
The door opened a crack. His mother peered out, her expression already guarded, a familiar mask of placid composure. “Kelly,” she said, her voice carefully neutral. “What are you doing out there?”
“I just got back,” he said, his own voice low. “I need to talk to you.”
Her fingers laced together, a nervous knot at her waist. “About what?”
“I know these kinds of conversations make you anxious, but please try to meet me halfway here,” he said quietly, trying to keep his own frustration in check. “This matters.”
She sighed, a small, weary sound that seemed to deflate her shoulders, and stepped aside. “Come in.”
Inside, the air was still and sterile, smelling of lemon polish and the faint, cloying scent of potpourri.
The only sound was the low, rhythmic hum of an old refrigerator and the relentless tick-tock of a grandfather clock in the hall, measuring time without allowing it to pass.
Everything was immaculate. The same furniture, positioned with military precision.
The same careful order. Nothing disturbed.
Nothing acknowledged. A single photo of his father stood on the mantelpiece, polished and placed like an exhibit.
She sat on the sofa, perched on the edge as if ready to flee. He lowered himself into the armchair across from her, the motion stiff and deliberate. A tight pull in his side reminded him he had been cut. She noticed immediately.
“You’re hurt.”
“It’s most healed.”
“You were wounded, and you didn’t call me.” Her tone was laced with accusation, and he realized it had nothing to do with her concern. Did she think it was the right response?
“I didn’t think it was a big deal.” He kept his voice flat, refusing to give her the emotion she wanted to dissect or allow this discussion to deviate from what he needed.
Her mouth tightened, a familiar line of disapproval. “It is.”
He didn’t rise to it because he didn’t believe her. “I’m not here to argue about that.”
She waited, her hands folded in her lap, her posture rigid.
“When did you conceive me?” he asked.
The question hung in the sterile air. She blinked, a flicker of genuine surprise breaking through her composure. “Why would you ask that?”
“When.”
“Oh, honey,” she said, waving a dismissive hand, the gesture a practiced evasion. “That isn’t important.”
“It is to me.” The edge in his voice surprised her. “I need to understand something.”
She exhaled, looking suddenly tired. “I was seventeen.”
“In high school.”
“Yes.” She looked away.
“Did he know about me when you married him?” He held his breath, hanging on every look, every breath she took.
“Yes.” She frowned, the lines on her forehead deepening.
Shock coursed through him. This truth was deeper and more meaningful than hearing about Derrick.
He had to take a hard, painful breath, let this information process through him like a rolling tide, drawing on him like the moon, the sheer realization that his father gave him unconditional love even before he was born.
“He knew I wasn’t his. He married you while you were pregnant with another man’s kid? ”
“Yes. Your father loved me…us.” Her face contorted with a grief so swift and sharp it stole his breath, but she smoothed it out almost as fast. It was the only time she’d ever given him a part of herself, and it was everything.
It was the answer. God, he wanted her to cry, now, in front of him, looking him in the eye, but she shut down.
“Why are you digging this up now?”
He stared at her for a long moment, letting the silence stretch, the ticking of the clock marking the seconds.
“Because I found someone beautiful and true. She never pulls punches. She’s been flipping everything I do and say back at me like a hard lesson on what intimacy means.
She’s never looked away from me…not once, and I’m beginning to realize why I just fucked it up.
” Her gaze flicked away, toward the pristine mantelpiece.
Her fingers twitched against her slacks.
“You loved him,” he said, not a question.
“Of course I did.”
“Then say it,” he said quietly, his voice soft but unyielding.
She looked back at him, startled.
“Say that you loved him so much you couldn’t grieve him out loud,” he continued, his gaze pinning her down. “Say that loving him destroyed you, and that getting close to me felt like reopening that wound. Say that staying distant was easier than risking that kind of pain again.”
Her breath caught, a small, audible hitch. Her lips pressed together, losing their color.
“And say that what you gave me wasn't love. That it was survival. That you taught me to build walls because you were trapped behind your own.”
Silence pressed in hard, thick and suffocating.
“I’m not asking you to justify it,” he said, his tone softening just enough to show this wasn’t an attack. “I just need you to tell the truth. For once. About me. About Dad.”
She looked away, her shoulders drawing in, retreating to the place he’d never been allowed to follow. “I was trying to stay normal,” she said, her voice thin. “For you. For your own—”
“Don’t,” he said softly, cutting her off.
“Don’t tell me it was for my own good. We both know it wasn’t.
” She didn’t answer, her jaw working. “I didn’t need normal,” he said, the words heavy with years of unspoken pain.
“I needed you. I heard you crying at night. I wanted to help. I didn’t know how to ask.
I learned to leave you alone because that’s what you taught me to do. ”
She said nothing, her knuckles white where she gripped her own hands.
“That’s what I got,” he said, the last of his anger draining away, leaving only a hollow ache. “Distance. Half-truths. Silence.”
Her jaw set, a final, stubborn defense. “You turned out fine.”
He let out a slow, shuddering breath. As he spoke, a sharp, familiar pain flared in his side, a physical echo of the wound she couldn’t see.
“No. I didn’t.” That finally made her look at him, really look at him.
“I locked everything down,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.
“Feelings. Grief. Want. I learned it from you, and it almost cost me everything.”
Her eyes widened, a flicker of something, fear, maybe, in their depths. “Kelly—”
“I’m not blaming you,” he said, his voice quiet but firm. “I just needed you to hear it.”
She looked away again, the wall back in place. “That’s all in the past,” she said, her tone dismissive. “Best to let it go.” He watched her close the door from the inside. Something in him settled. She stood, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles from her slacks. “Will you be staying for dinner?”
He rose carefully, the pull in his side sharp but grounding. He moved with a deliberation that felt new, unburdened. “No.”
She hesitated, as if surprised by the finality in his tone.
“I just needed the truth,” he said. “I have it now.”
He walked out without another word, the door clicking shut behind him, sealing her in her world of quiet denial.
Outside, the air felt clearer. Warm and honest. He waited for the pain to hit him full force.
For the grief to tear open something raw.
It didn’t. Because he’d already lost her a long time ago.
Now, finally, he understood that loss. He could name it.
He could grieve it, and he could survive it.
Some people couldn’t meet you where you were going.
That didn’t make them villains. It just meant you stopped waiting.
He stepped off the porch and didn’t look back.
He stopped at a red light, allowing a man to cross the street. Breakneck’s hands tightened on the wheel. Something in the man’s shoulders reminded him of Trevor Jones, and everything flooded back.