Chapter 2
Skylar
The movie has been playing for forty-three minutes and I couldn’t tell you a single fucking thing about it.
Light shifts across the wall. Voices rise and fall. I’ve been staring in the general direction of the screen long enough that my eyes no longer register any of it. It’s simply background noise.
I sit curled at the end of Damien’s couch, knees tucked beneath me, wrapped in a silk robe I saved up to buy, which cost me more than anything I owned before I turned eighteen.
The fabric slips off one shoulder every time I move.
I used to think soft things meant safety.
Silk. Clean sheets. A working lock. A kitchen with food in it, where no one screamed through the walls or counted every bite you took.
A bathroom that didn’t smell of mildew and cheap bleach soaked into tiles that nobody had cleaned properly in years.
Now I know soft things can still choke you. They just do it quietly.
Today has sat wrong in my bones since I woke up this morning.
There’s no reason really.
Well, that’s what I told myself at six o’clock this morning, standing in the kitchen with my coffee turning cold in my hand, staring at the benchtop.
No fucking reason.
That’s what I told myself when I forgot to add sugar to Damien’s coffee and he gave me that stare. I just made him another cup and sensed his eyes on my back, probably cataloging it, filing it away for later.
I left the kitchen and went to the bathroom before he could say anything. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and stood over the sink long enough to even out my breathing while I told myself the same thing I always do.
I am fine. I have a good life. Damien loves me the way men like Damien love anything. With possession. With convenience. With the smug satisfaction of a man who owns the couch, the apartment, the bed, and thinks the woman inside is another thing that proves he has won something.
So why does my chest still feel like it’s been packed with broken glass?
I don’t answer that because I already know that Zane Rivera walked out of prison today.
I wonder if he’s changed.
Seven years is a long time to be anywhere, let alone somewhere like that. Long enough that the boy I knew might not exist anymore, buried beneath whatever prison made of him.
Or maybe he’s exactly the same.
Maybe he still carries himself as if the world owes him a fight and he’s got nothing to lose by collecting.
With me, he was soft in a way I don’t think even he had a name for. The way he held my face. The way he looked at me. He made me feel wanted in a way I didn’t know was possible. He made me feel like loving someone wasn’t something that destroyed you.
He taught me that.
And then he sat across from me in that visitation room, one week after they sentenced him, looked me dead in the eyes, and told me I was nothing. That I’d never been anything. That everything between us had been a lie.
I know Rainer picked him up today. He told me last week, when I went around to the workshop, sitting across from me with his coffee, saying it plain and simple, the way Rainer says everything.
I just wrapped my hand around the mug of tea he had made me, and nodded as if the information had landed nowhere. As if the sound of Zane’s name didn’t still have the power to reach inside my chest and rearrange things.
I didn’t tell Rainer it was the last time I’d be around.
We just sat there and talked the way we always did. About the workshop. About the car he was working on. About what I had been doing and nothing in particular.
After the sentencing, Rainer told me I could stay in the upstairs apartment for as long as I needed. Zane would want that, he said. And I stayed. For a while, I stayed.
But the apartment was everywhere he had ever been.
His jacket on the hook by the door, a thing I couldn’t bring myself to move.
The smell of him, which faded so slowly that I started to dread the day it would be gone entirely.
The mug he always used. Every corner of that place held a version of him, some memory pressed into the walls.
I would lie in that bed every single night and cry until there was nothing left, and then cry again when morning came because another day had started and he still wasn’t in it.
I tried to hold myself together in that apartment.
I tried for months, but grief has a way of wearing you down when you’re sleeping inside it.
In the end, Rainer knew things without being told.
He showed up one afternoon, sat down across from me, and slid a piece of paper with an address on it across the table.
He said his friend was renting a small place and that it was clean and quiet.
Then he reached into his pocket, put down an envelope of cash, and told me it wasn’t a discussion.
He drove me to three different second-hand stores on a Saturday morning and didn’t say much as I picked out what I needed.
A lamp. A small table. A bed.
He paid for everything without making a big deal of it, just handed over the money and carried the things to the truck like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.
I got a job. I built something small, quiet, and entirely mine. A life that fits inside four walls, and I told myself every day that it was enough.
Most days, I almost believed it.
I owe Rainer everything, the same way Zane does, in that bone-deep way you can’t put a number to and can’t ever fully repay.
He never asked for anything in return. Not once. Not a single time did he hold out his hand, remind me of what he’d done, or use any of it to make me feel small.
I had never experienced that before.
Not once in my entire life had anyone given me something and wanted nothing in return. A condition buried in the fine print. A hand extended, then held over your head the moment you needed a reminder of your place.
From the bedroom, Damien snores. The deep sleep of a man with nothing on his chest.
He came home earlier, shirt half untucked, hair a mess, mouth wearing that lazy grin he gets when someone else makes him feel wanted. He kissed the side of my head and called me baby as if the word could wash the night off him.
I smelled it before he even reached me. Smoke. Whiskey. Perfume. And I said nothing.
There was a time when I would have burned him to the ground with my words and walked away without looking back.
When my mouth was the sharpest thing about me.
I wielded it like a weapon, striking first because I learnt early that the world hits harder when you give it time to aim. I didn’t take shit from anyone.
Now I sit on this couch and say nothing.
I don’t understand when that happened. When I traded the sharp edges for silence.
Maybe it was gradual. Perhaps it happened the way most things do, slowly and then all at once, and by the time I noticed, I’d already forgotten what it felt like to fight back.
Or maybe I simply ran out of things worth fighting for.
My phone lights up on the coffee table.
Cassie.
Her name glows across the screen. For a second, I don’t move. I almost don’t answer because I’m aware as to why she’s calling.
My fingers curl around the phone. It vibrates in my palm, a frantic little heartbeat. I answer before I talk myself out of it.
For half a second, there is only breathing on the other end. Then comes the sound of gum snapping between her teeth. “He’s out. Did you go see him?”
Those simple words, and yet my heart cracks open with the pathetic obedience of something that has waited years to break again.
“Sky.” Her voice shifts into something softer now. “Are you breathing or did you finally die dramatically to avoid feeling?”
I blink, pulling my knees tighter to my chest. “It doesn’t change anything,” I say.
Cassie goes quiet. That is how I know she’s pissed. “You cannot possibly believe that.”
“Last I checked, believing was optional.”
“Cute.” The gum snaps. “Are we doing denial today, too? Should I grab snacks, or is this a full-buffet situation?”
I push myself upright on the couch. The robe slips farther off my shoulder, and I yank it back into place as if silk modesty were the real problem here.
“There is nothing to discuss, Cass.”
“Yeah, sure,” she says, chewing hard. “The guy you loved. The guy you cried over until your bones looked hollow. The guy you pretended to hate so hard it started to look like a full-time job and a personality shift. Zane just walked out of prison today. But totally nothing to discuss.”
My throat tightens until swallowing becomes an effort. “I didn’t cry over him.”
Cassie snorts. “Right. And I am a calm, emotionally stable woman who makes excellent choices.” A beat. “Bitch, don’t you lie to me. I know you. I was there.” Her voice drops, the humor peeling back just enough to reveal what’s underneath. “I’ll tell you again. Get rid of that asshole you’re with.”
I glance toward the bedroom.
“You called to tell me he’s out,” I say, keeping my voice low. “Message received. Is that all?”
“No. I called so I could stop you from sitting alone in that soulless home you call an apartment, pretending you’re not thinking about him while that walking STD sleeps off whatever woman he was inside of tonight.”
My jaw snaps tight. “Don’t talk about Damien.”
Cassie laughs, but there is no humor in it. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I insult Prince Charming? Should I send flowers to his wandering dick?”
“Cassie.”
“What? Too much?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Everything about him is too fucking much. The shirts. The fake charm. The way he struts around like his dick deserves its own ZIP code.” She scoffs. “He doesn’t give a shit about you, Sky.”
Heat climbs up my neck. “You don’t understand my relationship at all.”
“I know enough.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I’m aware you don’t laugh anymore.”
The words land hard. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.