Chapter 12 #2
God, she was beautiful. Even now, even like this. But she looked like a stranger. Or maybe not a stranger, a woman retreating into a version of herself that Sloane no longer recognized.
Sloane let the silence stretch just long enough to hurt.
“I can’t keep doing this,” she said finally.
Catherine didn’t move.
“I let you in,” Sloane continued. “Not just once. Not for a night. I’ve let you in over and over again. And every time I do, you pull away. You disappear. And I’m left trying to decide if I imagined any of it.”
Catherine’s throat moved, but she didn’t speak.
Sloane took a step closer, not threatening. Just real.
“You don’t get to do that,” she said softly. “You don’t get to open the door and slam it shut when it scares you.”
“I didn’t vanish,” Catherine said. It came out cold and brittle. But something in her face cracked.
“You did,” Sloane said. “You deleted my messages. You didn’t even read them.”
The silence roared louder than any shouting match.
Catherine closed her eyes.
And when she opened them again, Sloane saw it, something like pain. Something like shame.
“Because if I did” she said, voice low, “I’d go back.”
Her hands dropped from her chest, her arms no longer crossed. Vulnerable. Exposed.
“And I can’t—”
“Why not?” Sloane asked. “Because you might feel something?”
“Because I already do.”
Catherine’s voice broke on the last word, so soft Sloane almost didn’t hear it.
She stared at her, stunned. For a long, suspended second, neither of them moved. The air between them was thick with something unsaid, something ancient and tender and unbearably raw.
Sloane’s heartbeat drummed in her ears, but her voice, when it came, was steady.
“Then what are you doing?” she asked. “What the hell is this, Catherine?”
Catherine turned her face away, leaning back against the cool cement wall of the stairwell, eyes fixed on a scuff mark near the floor.
Her arms hung uselessly at her sides. “I don’t know,” she said, finally.
“I thought I did. I thought if I stayed in control, if I kept the boundaries clear, if I didn’t want anyone, I’d be okay. ”
“And now?” Sloane asked. Her voice wasn’t demanding. It was gentle, honest.
Catherine’s mouth twisted into something like a grimace.
“Now,” she said, “you’re in every corner of my thoughts.
I hear your laugh in the middle of my rounds.
I see your damn journal every time I try to write up a report, and I can’t even look at a blank page without thinking of you.
” Her voice cracked, just barely. “You’re chaos, Sloane. And I’m not built for chaos.”
Sloane took a step forward. “No. You’re not. But you’re also not built for being this miserable either.”
Catherine flinched.
“And I’m not going to keep chasing a version of you that only exists when it’s convenient,” Sloane added, her voice lowering. “You don’t get to dip your toes into being vulnerable, then retreat like it never happened.”
Catherine looked up then, really looked at her. Her eyes were rimmed with exhaustion, but there was a spark in them now. A flicker of something trying to rise from the ashes.
“You think this is easy for me?” she asked, almost bitter. “You think I want to be like this?”
“No,” Sloane said quietly. “I think you’re scared.”
Catherine pressed her palm to the wall like she needed it to hold her up. Her shoulders heaved with a deep breath.
“You have no idea what it’s like,” she said, “to build your entire life on being strong, on being enough, because no one ever showed up. No one ever stayed. And then you show up, bright and loud and soft in all the places I never learned how to be soft, and I—” Her voice failed her. “I don’t know how to let that in.”
Sloane’s expression shifted. The steel melted and was replaced with something achingly gentle.
“Then let me help,” she said. “Let me show you how.”
Catherine shook her head slowly. “I don’t know if I can.”
Sloane stepped closer. Just close enough to feel the heat of her without touching. “That’s not good enough anymore.”
She didn’t say it cruelly. It wasn’t a threat. But it was final.
“You want me? Then show me. Not tomorrow. Not someday when it’s easier. Now. Or let me go.”
Catherine swallowed hard, eyes flickering between Sloane’s and the floor like she wanted to look away but couldn’t. Her breathing was shallow, her control fraying at the edges again.
“I—” she started, then stopped.
“Say it,” Sloane said. “Say anything real. For once.”
Catherine’s jaw clenched, and she turned her back to Sloane, her palm still braced on the wall. Her shoulders rose and fell with a shaky breath. Then, so quietly Sloane almost missed it, she said,
“I don’t know who I am without the distance.”
Sloane’s heart squeezed. Because finally, finally, Catherine was telling the truth.
She stepped closer, slowly, and touched a hand to the back of Catherine’s arm. Just a touch. Nothing more.
“Then let me meet the woman behind the walls,” she whispered. “Even if she’s messy. Even if she’s scared.”
Catherine didn’t move. But she didn’t pull away either.
A long silence fell. The kind that said more than words ever could.
Then, Catherine turned back to face her. And in her blue eyes, was everything Sloane had been waiting for.
“I don’t want to lose you,” Catherine whispered.
Sloane’s lips parted, her breath catching. “Then don’t.”
Catherine nodded once. Almost imperceptibly. Her walls hadn’t shattered. But they were lowering, brick by trembling brick.
“One chance,” Sloane said softly. “That’s all I’m asking.”
Catherine looked at her, and for the first time, she didn’t retreat.
“I’ll try,” she said.
It wasn’t a declaration. It wasn’t perfect. But it was real.
Sloane smiled, soft and exhausted. “Then that’s enough.”
They didn’t hug or touch again. But when Catherine walked away, she looked back once over her shoulder.
And Sloane knew: the ice was thawing.
The sky had darkened by the time Sloane pushed open the door to her studio.
The hinges creaked, the same familiar sound they always made, but tonight it felt louder. The entire space felt louder somehow, too full and too empty all at once.
She let the door swing shut behind her, the click echoing in the stillness. Her boots tracked faint footprints across the paint-streaked floor as she moved deeper into the room.
Sloane didn’t bother turning on the overheads. She walked in dim light, golden from the amber glass sconces along the back wall, and collapsed onto the couch in the center of the chaos. The worn cushions gave easily under her weight, as if they, too, were too tired to hold her.
She stared at the ceiling: paint-splattered, just like everything else. Familiar and messy and hers.
And she let the silence settle.
It wasn’t peace she felt. Not quite. It was more like the stillness after a storm, where the wind hasn’t stopped howling, but the rain finally has. Her limbs were heavy. Her lungs felt like they’d been rung out.
Sloane rubbed a hand across her eyes, then let it fall over her stomach. Her other hand dangled off the side of the couch, fingertips brushing the corner of an old canvas that had slipped from the stack. She didn’t move it.
Catherine’s face hovered behind her eyelids.
The stairwell. Her voice cracking. The moment she finally admitted she was scared.
Sloane had meant every word she’d said. She wasn’t built for half-truths and love in the dark. If Catherine couldn’t choose this, choose them, then Sloane was ready to walk.
She still would, if she had to.
But she didn’t want to. God, she didn’t want to.
Catherine’s words had cracked open something inside her. Not certainty, but something.
Sloane closed her eyes and whispered into the dark, “That better be true, Harrington.”
She sat there for a long time, letting the weight of everything settle in her chest.
Then, finally, she pushed up from the couch and crossed to her easel. She hadn’t touched it in days, hadn’t been able to find the center of herself long enough to paint anything real.
But now, the silence felt different. Not empty. Just…waiting.
Sloane pulled the white canvas forward.
Her fingers hovered over the brush jar.
Red, she thought. She wanted red.
She dipped the brush in, let the color sink into the bristles, and dragged it slowly across the canvas in one long, deliberate stroke.
It felt like exhaling.
She didn’t think. Didn’t plan. She just painted.
Bold streaks. Wide arcs. The shape of uncertainty. The heat of something unfinished.
A mouth half-open. Eyes filled with something she didn’t dare name.
Not a portrait. Not yet. But maybe it would be.
Maybe, when she was done, Catherine would see it.
See herself.
See them.
Maybe.
The brush moved again.
And Sloane, with paint on her hands and her chest still aching, felt something she hadn’t felt in days.
Free.