December

Chapter 16 Scars and Sparkle

(Ryder)

December—

I have written this letter a dozen times in my head and torn it up in my hands more times than I can count.

I am terrible at beginning things that matter; maybe that is why I hid so much of the rest of my life from you.

I am terrible at admitting I'm broken. But I have to be honest with you now, because silence has been its own cruelty.

For years I swallowed someone else's version of me until I could barely hear my own voice.

I learned to make myself small — smaller than the things that hurt me, smaller than the shame I carried.

When I met you, you felt like a room with sunlight in it after a lifetime of basements.

You were warmth where I only ever knew cold.

You were laughter where I had learned to measure every breath.

I fell toward you because you seemed impossible to break.

I thought keeping us secret was protection.

I told myself I was shielding you from the wreckage I carried.

I told myself I was sparing you from the headlines, the names, the explanations that never fit.

The truth is uglier: I hid you because I was ashamed.

I hid you because I was afraid that if you saw me — bruised, messy, less than the man I pretended to be — you would leave.

I told myself I was protecting you, but in doing so I stole from you the choice to stay or go. That is on me. That is my failing.

You deserved better than secrecy. You deserved to be held up in the light, not folded into my dark corners.

I told myself I was saving you from my past; instead I built a wall between us.

I see now how that wall became a lie between you and me.

For that, every small cruelty of omission, every withheld truth, I am sorry with a kind of remorse that burns slow.

Please know this, above all: none of what I did to you was because of you.

Everything I said, everything I withheld, was about my own fear and my own failure to be brave enough to bring my whole self into the light.

If I treated you with distance, if I let you feel unneeded or unvalued, that was my cowardice, not your fault. You are not the sum of my silence.

I would give anything to come to you now and beg , poorly and brokenly, for forgiveness and a chance to begin again.

I would beg to show you the parts of me I was too ashamed to show before, to let you choose with full knowledge what you want from me.

But I will not ask you to carry my repair.

You deserve someone steady from the start, someone whose history is not a landmine for your future.

You deserve laughter that is easy and honesty that is habit.

You deserve better than a man still learning how to be whole.

If there is any small mercy in my failure, it is this: I am beginning to do the work.

I am learning to say the words I used to hide.

I am sitting in rooms with other survivors and listening to them name things I could not name alone.

I am learning that surviving is not the same as being healed, and that healing will take more than courtroom victories or news cycles.

It will take days that feel like nothing and then, sometimes, days that feel like progress.

You are beautiful in ways that do not depend on me to prove true.

You are brave and bright and you will make someone very lucky.

I do not expect you to wait for me. I do not expect you to forgive me.

I only want, selfishly and humbly, for you to know the truth — that I am sorry, that I was afraid, and that my failure to protect you was a failure of my own courage.

If someday I become the kind of man who is worthy of you, steady, honest, unafraid to show his scars and to ask for help, then maybe, if you can imagine it, you will see me as someone who tried and did not always succeed.

Until then I will hold the knowledge of you like something sacred, and I will try to deserve the mercy of being worthier than I am today.

With the smallest and truest part of me,

Ryder

I kept reading and rereading the letter. Weeks had passed, yet I remained stranded in the same loop—shock circling into disbelief, disbelief boiling into rage, rage dissolving into sorrow, sorrow collapsing into guilt. Anger at him for the choices he made, anger for him for what he endured.

When I watched the press conference, when his voice trembled as he forced the truth into the light, something inside me cracked open.

My chest ached with fury at the woman who had broken him, at the cruelty that left scars no one should ever have to carry.

I hated her for what she did to him. I hated him for letting that pain spill into us.

Sadness followed close behind, sharp and merciless.

I missed him with a desperation that hollowed me out.

I missed his laughter, the way his presence filled a room, the fragile moments where he let me glimpse his softness beneath the armor.

I loved him—God, I loved him so much it hurt to breathe.

But love was powerless now, a useless weight I could not set down, a flame trapped in glass.

I wanted to reach for him, to fix what had already been broken long before I arrived, but I couldn't. I was left with silence, with distance, with the cruel knowledge that no amount of love could undo the past. Maybe we collided at the wrong time.

Maybe love isn't enough when the wounds run too deep.

Maybe we were never meant to last, but that doesn't stop me from wanting him still, even knowing I can do nothing about it.

I know he needs time to heal. So do I, and deep down, I don't believe we should ever find our way back to each other.

I am not angry with him anymore, but the betrayal still burns.

The lies, the danger, the shame, the humiliation of being mistrusted and deceived—they live inside me like splinters.

I understand where he was coming from, but that doesn't silence the pain. I carry it with me still.

One day, I wandered to Billy's workshop that smelled like fire, metal, dusty earth and the cold, sweet bite of gemstones.

He kept a tray of rough stones on the bench like a musician keeps picks: amethysts that glowed like bruised plums, citrines bright as spilled sunlight, and a few aquamarines so clear they seemed to hold a slice of sky.

He handed me a pair of pliers as if passing a crown.

"Careful," he said, grin tugging under his beard. "You're holding the power to bend the universe, or at least this scrap of silver."

I cocked an eyebrow. "I break coffee mugs by breathing on them. You sure this is a good idea?"

"Better," he said. "If you break something here, we melt it down and start again."

Billy winked and nudged a small tray toward me. In the center lay a parcel—an unfinished pendant with a pale blue stone set in an awkward, half-formed bezel. "Try setting that," he said. "Stones teach patience. They don't rush."

I picked up the gem and turned it in the light. Minute facets caught the sun and threw it back like little promises. The stone felt cool and ridiculous in my palm, ridiculous because it was so small and finite and utterly indifferent to my heartbreak.

I worked clumsily at first, stubby fingers fumbling wire and solder.

Focus narrowed like the eye of a needle.

Twist, press, file—those motions drowned out the louder, meaner thoughts that lived in my head.

They always began in the same place: a rewind of betrayal, a chorus of Mom's judgment, the old playground taunts that never really stopped just because we grew up.

Those memories never disappeared, but here, they softened under the rhythm of work.

From across the bench, his voice broke through the quiet. "I know," he said, a crooked smile tugging at his beard. "Jewelry's therapy, right? with less crying and more sparkle."

Margot's voice slipped into my ear later that afternoon with all the subtlety of a marching band.

"Speaking of which, therapy might be useful, December, you know?" she said.

I froze at the doorway, a palm flat against the bench. "I know," I whispered. "I'm scared. It feels like admitting I'm not... normal."

She laughed—soft, sympathetic. "Normal is a boring club. Nobody I want to be in. What is normal anyway? Who's normal?"

I didn't answer, but my silence asked the question for me.

Margot leaned back on her stool, fingers winding a thin wire like she was braiding a thought into shape.

"Everyone carries something, Dec" she said quietly.

"Some people wear their pain loud—scarred knuckles, raised voices, self-sabotage that screams. Others.

.. it's quieter. It dresses well, smiles politely, answers texts on time.

But it's still pain. None of it makes you less.

None of it makes you unworthy. It just makes you real. "

I couldn't look at her. My eyes stayed locked on the pendant in my palm—still warm from the torch, edges slightly rough, the bezel a hair off center. But the way it caught the light? God, it shimmered like it had a soul.

"No one," she said, her voice carrying the weight of a thousand unspoken confessions.

"We're all walking around with taped-up hearts, stitched together with threads of denial, hoping no one notices the seams. Our smiles are rehearsed, polished until they shine just enough to pass in daylight, and our hands—" she glanced down at her own, the faintest tremor fluttering like a moth's wing "—our hands remember what our mouths won't say.

Some of us just learn how to still them better than others. "

The pliers clicked softly against the bench, a delicate, brittle sound, like porcelain fracturing beneath a fingertip. It echoed through the room like a pulse refusing to surrender.

"The truth?" Her breath wavered but her eyes didn't. They held me with a gentleness that ached.

"Therapy doesn't mean you're shattered beyond repair.

It means you've bled long enough in silence, and you've finally decided your pain deserves a witness.

It means you're weary of patching yourself up in the dark, weary of pretending scabs are the same thing as healing.

It means you've chosen courage over camouflage.

It means you've dared to believe, just for a moment, that healing isn't a myth told to other people, but a story you might be worthy of, too. "

I blinked fast. My throat burned. The pendant caught the light like it forgave me for every ugly thought I'd ever had about myself.

Her words wormed around something tight in my chest. The following week, I booked an appointment.

Just booking it made my hands shake. The waiting room smelled like rain on pavement and lemon cleaner.

Too clean. Too still. I sat there with my coat folded in my lap, picking at the hem like it might unravel fast enough to keep me from bolting.

My name was called, and my body moved before my mind could protest.

Dr. Hale's office didn't look like the ones in movies. No leather couch. No wall of degrees designed to silently impress. Just a soft chair, some plants that were actually alive, and a tall window letting in light like it was meant to.

Her gaze was steady but not sharp. When she finally spoke, her voice didn't push.

"What brought you here, December?"

"I'm tired of letting my thoughts win,," I said.

She met my eyes and said, "That's a good place to start."