27. Dean
DEAN
I wake with a crick in my neck and Thalassa’s hand in mine.
The couch beneath me is a war crime in the form of furniture. It’s too short, too narrow, and stuffed with what feels like rolled-up newspaper. But her fingers are curled against my palm, warm and soft, and that makes everything else feel like background noise.
Across the hospital room, Colin is still asleep. His monitor beeps quietly, steady and slow, the sound now familiar enough to be almost soothing.
Tic is gone. He probably slipped out around dawn. Hospitals don’t agree with him since he lost his wife and child. It’s not obvious in any way that shows up on paper, but in the quiet wariness in his posture. The way he nearly jumps out of his skin every time a nurse or doctor comes in.
Arabella is curled in a chair under a scratchy blanket, one sock half-off, hair falling over her eyes. It’s a chaotic kind of peace in here, the kind that only happens after something worse.
Thalassa is curled sideways against my chest, still asleep, one arm tucked under her head, the other tangled with mine.
Her hoodie’s pushed up at the wrist, revealing the pale inside of her forearm.
There’s a small scar there—faint, but visible.
I wonder if it’s from something ordinary, or if there’s a story. She doesn’t talk much about her past.
Her nose twitches as she stirs. She blinks up at me, still not quite awake. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I say back.
She shifts, stretches. Her spine pops audibly. “Ow. This couch sucks.”
“Agreed.”
Still, I haven’t let go of her hand. She notices. Looks down at our fingers. Then doesn’t pull away. It does something to me I’m not prepared for.
This woman grounds me in a way I didn’t know I needed. I’ve spent years perfecting distance. Politeness. Efficient conversations. Professional charm. But none of it applies here. Around her, I feel…stripped.
And yet, I don’t want to hide.
When it comes to Thalassa, I have no defense. No armor. No way to stop the way she’s already working herself into places I’d walled off for good reason.
It’s real. And it’s pure. And it terrifies me.
We stretch and stumble our way upright. Colin’s awake now, sipping weak coffee and already cracking jokes about hospital food. He looks better. Pale, but better.
“I told you two to go home last night,” he says, voice scratchy.
Thalassa sits at the edge of the bed. “We weren’t going to leave you alone.”
“You should’ve,” he says. “That couch is probably made of rebar and spite. You’re going to need a chiropractor just from breathing next to it.”
“I can’t argue that,” she mutters, rubbing her back. “My spine might actually be in the shape of a question mark.”
“Go home,” Colin says. “Both of you. I’ll get a ride. I’ll be fine.”
I hesitate. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. They’re discharging me later today. I’ve got Tic breathing down everyone’s neck. I’m pretty sure the cafeteria guy brought me extra Jell-O out of fear.”
That earns a snort from Thalassa.
I gather our things. Her bag is light—just a sweatshirt, a water bottle, the ultrasound photo she carries around like a treasure.
Being on a college campus feels wrong. Maybe it’s my age, but I feel out of place. I’m not a professor. I’m walking with the woman I love, hand in hand, but I don’t belong here.
Her dorm room is small. Cramped, even.
The ceilings are low, the windows narrow. The bed is a twin, pushed up against the wall under a corkboard with photos and faded Post-it notes. There’s a hot plate, a battered electric kettle, and three mugs that don’t match. One of them says, “Caffeine Is Not a Personality.”
The mug lies. Just ask Colin.
It’s clean, but in the way that comes from necessity, not design. Everything has a place because there’s nowhere else to put it. She throws her bag on the bed and exhales like she’s finally able to breathe. “Sorry,” she says. “It’s not exactly palatial.”
“It’s lived-in,” I say. “And warm.”
“Which is code for tiny and underfunded.”
I glance around. “And yet, far more human than the mansion.”
She looks up at me. “You think?”
“Our place feels like a museum most days. We don’t live in it so much as visit it. That’s why we keep apartments out of the house.”
She chuckles, pulling off her hoodie and stretching again. “Well, yeah. I couldn’t imagine actually living there. Too many echo-y rooms. Too many doorways that look like they belong in a castle.”
“I agree.”
I don’t mean to say what comes next. It just slips out. “It takes a woman’s touch to make a house into a home.”
She freezes. Just for a second. Then she looks at me with something unreadable in her eyes. The air shifts. Warmer, but heavier.
I clear my throat. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”
She raises a brow. “That’s never a comforting sentence.”
“I don’t want it to sound like a confession.
Or a brag. But I also don’t want to keep it from you.
Lately, I’ve watched secrets and lies tear apart my family’s legacy, and I’m done with them.
” The panic surfaces. When I saw the footage of Colin’s fall, I lost it.
I decided then and there I had to do this, no matter what.
“Marcus’s lies about Starconnector costing too much led to Colin’s collapse.
If he hit his head on the way down or…if it wasn’t just exhaustion…
he could have died. No good comes from keeping secrets. Agreed?”
She narrows her gaze. “Dean…”
“I arranged for your father’s prosthetic.”
She blinks. “What?”
“I paid for it. Quietly. Through a shell corporation. I didn’t want to interfere, but I thought—well, I thought he deserved the best.”
She stares at me, stunned. “How…how did you even know about that?”
“I looked into you.”
Her expression hardens. “You what?”
“I was curious,” I admit. “Before the weekend. Before any of this. Your profile stood out. I looked you up. I saw an article. A photo of your family. The missing arm. I asked someone to reach out.”
She takes a step back, arms folded. “That was before the pregnancy.”
“Yes.”
“So you just…help people like that? Behind the scenes?”
“Sometimes,” I say. “I’ve spent a lot of my life with too much money and not enough purpose. When I see someone who could be helped—someone like your father—I try to act. It made me happy to hear about your reaction to the news. Colin said you were overjoyed?—”
“Colin saw me in the library when I found out?”
“Yeah. Good timing, I guess, as far as him being there when you found out. He hadn’t been watching you for long?—”
“Watching me?”
“You were never supposed to know it was me,” I say. “I didn’t want credit. I just wanted him to have a better life. And I’m telling you now, because like I said, I’m done with secrets.”
She shakes her head. Her words come out slowly. “You think it’s okay to stalk me and change my parents’ lives without asking?”
“I wasn’t stalking. I was helping.”
“No, I suppose you weren’t. Colin was.” Her voice is sharp.
Why is her voice sharp? “You sound mad?—”
“You do these big, life-altering things like it’s nothing, send your brother to stalk me around campus, and I’m just supposed to…be okay with that? Accept it because your intentions were good?”
My words scatter. “I thought you’d want me to be honest.”
“I’m grateful,” she says. “Of course I am. But it’s heavy-handed. And it has to stop.”
“Then it stops.”
She swallows. “Good. I’d like to sleep in my own bed for a while. Alone.”
I don’t like this. But I nod and leave her dorm room feeling a weight in my chest that doesn’t lift. I wanted to do right by her. And somehow, I still feel like I failed.
I don’t go home right away.
I drive, but without direction, taking turns that don’t lead anywhere, letting the city pass by in a blur of traffic lights and reflective glass.
I don’t even remember which bridge I crossed.
I just know that I end up pulling over somewhere near a park, shutting off the engine, and sitting with my hands still on the wheel.
I thought telling her would feel like relief. Instead, I feel like I’m coming apart in layers.
I try to replay the moment with different words. Try to picture saying it differently—softer, smarter, less abrupt. But there’s no version of it that changes what it was. A rich man, making a decision that should have been hers to make.
Even if I thought I was helping. Especially because I thought I was helping. My intentions don’t matter if the impact hurts her. I know that.
But it didn’t hurt her. It helped her. This is confusing. And I hate the way it feels to be wrong.
I lean my head back and close my eyes. The air in the car is too warm. My jacket’s too stiff. I want to tear it all off and sink into something simpler. But I don’t know what that looks like anymore.
This morning, her fingers were tangled in mine. Her head rested against my shoulder. And now? Now I’m not sure she even wants to see me. I deserve that. But fuck, it hurts anyway.
I finally make it to the house when the sun is already starting to sink behind the trees. The mansion feels colder than usual. I’m not sure why I came here. Maybe I was hoping Thalassa would be here.
The silence inside is different now. Louder. Not empty—just full of echoes. Every footstep feels like a reminder. Every breath sounds bigger than it should. I walk through the kitchen, turn on the stove like I’m going to make tea, and then turn it back off again without touching a kettle.
There’s too much noise in here. So I go out to the garden. The air is heavy with damp green things—clover, moss, the first tulips pushing through the soil. The sky’s gone pink at the edges, like it’s trying to apologize for how long today has been.
I walk the perimeter of the hedges, hands in my pockets, and try to make sense of how I ended up here—how something that felt so natural unraveled so fast.
And maybe that’s the real problem.
I’ve spent my whole life making things run smoothly. Knowing what to expect. Reading the room. Controlling the variables. But this—her—it’s all emotion and instinct and heart.
No rules. No control. And I can’t fix it with money. I can’t buy my way back into her trust. That realization sits in my chest like a weight I can’t lift.
I’m in the library when I hear the front door open. It closes gently, like someone’s trying not to disturb the house. Footsteps follow. Unhurried. Confident.
It’s Tic.
He finds me sitting on the edge of the reading chaise with a glass of water I haven’t touched. He takes one look at me and lifts an eyebrow. “You look like you’re bracing for impact.”
“Maybe I am.”
He doesn’t ask for details. He just sits in the leather armchair across from me and crosses one ankle over his knee.
He’s always calm. Always composed. I used to think it was because he didn’t feel things the way the rest of us do.
Now I think it’s the opposite. He just doesn’t let feelings dictate his actions.
I envy that.
“Did you talk to her?” he asks.
I nod. “I told her about the prosthetic.”
“And?”
“She was grateful,” I say. “But she was also angry.”
“She has a right to be.”
“I know.”
We sit in silence for a long minute. The tick of the grandfather clock behind us is the only sound.
“I didn’t expect it to sting this much,” I admit.
Tic hums. “You didn’t think of it as control.”
“No,” I say, voice low. “I thought of it as kindness.”
“Kindness without consent is still control.”
I close my eyes. Let that truth sink in again.
“She said it was heavy-handed. It has to stop.”
“Do you think she’s wrong?”
I shake my head. “No. But I wish I didn’t feel like I broke something just by doing what I thought was right.”
Tic leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “You didn’t break anything. You exposed the cracks. There’s a difference.”
I look up at him. “You’re not mad?”
“No,” he says. “I’ve made worse mistakes.”
“That’s a low bar.”
“True,” he says, and for the first time, he smiles. It helps more than I expect.
Later, I walk back to my room. I take off the jacket.
Roll my sleeves up. Stand in front of the mirror and try to see what she sees.
I want to be the kind of man she can trust—not just with the big gestures, but with the small, everyday truths.
The hard conversations. The things that matter when money isn’t in the room.
I want to be worthy of the future I saw in her eyes when she looked at Colin sleeping in that hospital bed.
But I know now that wanting isn’t enough. Tomorrow, I’ll apologize again. Not with gifts. Not with gestures. Just with honesty. The only thing I have left to offer that means anything at all.