Chapter 75 Hollowed Out
HOLLOWED OUT
U Turn Me On - L?l?
Nightshade
Iget out of bed.
I don’t remember deciding to move – only the sudden need to be anywhere except still.
My feet hit the floor hard, bare against cold carpet, and I pace the length of the room like a caged animal that’s learned the exact limits of its enclosure.
Three steps. Turn. Three back. Again. My hands keep coming up to my hair, fingers threading through it, gripping hard enough to sting my scalp, then dropping uselessly to my sides.
The first sound reaches me mid-stride.
Not a word.
A breath torn loose.
I freeze with my hand braced against the wall, knuckles whitening as pressure builds behind my ribs. The wall is thin. Thinner than it should be. Every sound comes through wrong – too close, too intimate – like I’m standing on the wrong side of her skin.
It should be me.
She makes another noise, sharper this time, and my head tips back before I can stop it, throat exposed, jaw locking as something hot and violent coils low in my body. I drag in a breath that doesn’t help. My pulse is everywhere – thudding in my ears, my wrists, my throat.
She isn’t whispering.
She isn’t holding herself back.
That’s what breaks me.
I press my forehead to the wall and let the vibration of it bleed into my bones.
She’s meant to be mine.
The bed next door creaks – slow, deliberate – and I know exactly what that rhythm means. Someone swears softly. Another sound answers it, louder, unfiltered. Her voice fractures on it, and my hand slams flat against the plaster without permission.
I don’t recognise the sound she makes.
Or maybe I do, and that’s the problem.
It’s relief.
It’s release.
It’s the sound of someone being met exactly where they are.
Jealousy isn’t a strong enough word for this. This is possession turned inward, nowhere to go, eating me alive. My body reacts despite myself, heat gathering, pressure building, every nerve screaming for movement, for contact, for something I can’t touch.
I pace again.
Faster now.
I rake a hand down my face, drag my teeth across my lower lip hard enough to hurt, just to give the sensation somewhere else to live. Another sound slips through the wall – her breath going uneven, breaking apart – and my stomach twists violently.
I picture it without wanting to.
Her pinned.
Her body arching into it.
Her choosing this.
But I’m the one chosen.
Then – I let Valentine thank me for waiting.
The memory slices clean and precise.
I sink down until my back hits the wall, sliding until I’m sitting on the floor with my knees bent, forearms braced against them like I’m holding myself together by force. My breathing is shallow now, sharp, useless. Every sound she makes lands straight in my chest and detonates.
She cries out again – longer this time – and I close my eyes, but it doesn’t help.
The sound lives inside me now, vibrating through muscle and bone.
My hand tightens in my hair again, grip brutal, grounding myself through pain because it’s the only thing that cuts through the heat flooding my system.
I should hate him.
I don’t.
That truth is almost worse.
Because some part of me understands exactly what he’s doing. Why it works. Why she sounds like that. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t wait for permission that wasn’t needed. He didn’t try to be careful with her when she didn’t want careful.
He met her.
And I didn’t.
The bed creaks again. Slower now. Heavier.
Someone else shifts – another presence awake, listening, watching – and the knowledge that they can hear and see her too makes something feral snap inside me.
I bare my teeth into the dark, breath shuddering, and press my fist into my thigh hard enough to bruise.
I don’t look away.
I don’t cover my ears.
I listen to every second of it like penance.
When the sounds finally change – when her voice drops into something softer, wrecked, spent – I don’t feel relief. I feel hollowed out. Scraped clean. Left with nothing but clarity and a single, blinding line of intent.
This was never about sex.
It was about who gets to hold her when she stops holding herself.
I made the wrong choice.
I won’t make it again.
I push myself back to my feet slowly, deliberately, hands steady now in a way they weren’t before. The heat in my body hasn’t gone anywhere, but it’s contained, banked, turned into something colder and sharper.
I know what forgiveness will cost me.
Not words.
Not patience.
Not waiting.
I will dismantle the system that taught me silence was loyalty.
I will put my hands around the throat of the man who thought he could shape her life and walk away clean.
I will earn her forgiveness the only way that matters.
And when I stand in front of her again, I won’t ask.
I’ll show her.