Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
RONAN
I can’t stop shaking.
My knuckles are white where I grip the edge of the kitchen counter.
The tremors run deeper than muscle. They’re in my bones and my blood.
I shouldn’t have gone out. I know better than to walk through a town this small, where every street holds a ghost and every corner might hide the one person I’ve spent seven years trying to forget.
But the house was closing in on me, the walls pressing closer with each breath until the air turned thin.
I had to do something besides stand in rooms that smell like dust, and suffocate in the silence. The restlessness crawled under my skin until I had no choice but to get out.
So I walked. And between one breath and the next, she was there.
My grip tightens until the counter’s edge bites into my palms. The pain helps. It’s something to focus on beside the way my chest is trying to cave in on itself because I can’t wipe out the memory of her face from my mind.
Lily.
Standing on Main Street like she’d stepped out of the dreams that used to wake me at 3 A.M. in my cell.
The ones where I could still feel her hands on my skin, still taste her name in my mouth.
Where I’d jerk awake with my heart trying to break through my ribs, throat tight, and chest aching with a loss that never got easier to carry.
The moment she stepped into view, my entire world narrowed to just her face.
Her hair is shorter, falling just past her shoulders in waves that caught the streetlight.
My fingers twitch with muscle memory, remembering how that hair used to feel wrapped around them, silk and gold and mine for a few stolen hours.
But those eyes. Christ. Those fucking eyes haven’t changed at all. She still looks at me like she can see past skin and bone to every scar I’ve tried to hide under tattoos.
“You’re back.”
Her lips wrapped around those two words, spoken in the same voice that used to whisper against my skin in the dark. She’d beg me to let her help, let her in, and stop pushing her away. Seven years of distance should have dulled the impact, and made it just another sound.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.
I stood there, frozen, while my brain helpfully supplied all the details I’ve tried to forget. Every note she slipped into my locker, onto my desk, tucked between pages of library books. The lighthouses she drew, her handwriting. Every time she tried to reach past the walls I’d built.
“Why?”
The question hit like a fist to the gut. All the air left my lungs. My throat closed. The streetlight overhead flickered, and for a second I was back in the factory, her hands on my face, her voice saying my name like a prayer while my world fell apart.
Living on the streets gave me time to build walls. Layer by layer, brick by brick, I constructed defenses that could withstand anything. Five years in prison taught me how to reinforce them, and keep them strong.
It took thirty seconds of standing in front of Lily for every brick to crumble to dust.
Time changed us both, but her transformation is more physically obvious. She’s comfortable in her skin, confident in how she stands and holds herself. Secure in the fact that she belongs here, has roots and a life that makes sense.
I’m still learning how to exist in spaces that don’t have bars on the windows.
After my release, I slipped back into old patterns without meaning to.
It was the only way I knew how to live on the outside.
I took jobs where no one asked questions.
Construction sites, mostly. Places where my past didn’t matter as long as I showed up on time and did the work.
Jobs where the labor was hard enough to exhaust me past dreams and the memory of cell doors slamming.
I spent two years moving between cities, job sites, and motel rooms that all looked the same. I never stayed long enough for anyone to see past the surface, or spent enough time with anyone for them to look closely at who I was.
The same rootless existence I lived before prison. Only this time I had money for motel rooms, for food that didn’t come from dumpsters or theft, and for clothes that fit instead of hanging off a frame too thin to fill them.
And then she was standing in front of me again, and I was drowning in memories I can’t afford to relive.
The way she felt pressed against me, warm and alive and real in a world where everything else was cold.
The way she smelled of vanilla and something floral I never learned the name of, mixed with cotton and soap.
The way she tasted when she kissed me. The weight of her in my lap, her fingers in my hair, her breath against my neck.
The sounds she made when I touched her. The way her pulse jumped under my lips.
Every fucking detail I’ve tried to bury flooded back with enough force to break me all over again.
So, I walked away.
The same way I walked away from her seven years ago, when I chose silence over goodbye because words would have made it real, and hurt her more than I already was.
Walking away is the only thing I’ve ever been good at.
Outside the window, night falls, turning the streets dark and empty. Streetlights light up one by one, while I stand in the kitchen of a house that feels like a new kind of prison.
This one has no bars or guards. There’s no razor wire keeping me in.
But it’s a prison all the same, built from memories instead of steel.
One where her voice echoes off empty walls, mixing with all the ghosts I thought I’d left behind.
Where every room holds a version of myself I can’t escape, and every window shows me a town that never wanted me in the first place.
At least in actual prison, I knew the rules. I knew that if I kept my head down and did my time, eventually they’d let me out.
This prison doesn’t have a release date.
When I finally feel like I can stand without holding onto something, I push away from the counter and force myself to move. I need to think about something besides the way her voice sounded saying my name. I need to focus on something I can control.
The house creaks around me as I walk through rooms that still don’t feel real.
Everything needs work. The wiring is old enough to kill someone if they touch the wrong switch.
The plumbing sounds like it’s ready to burst every time I turn on a faucet.
The foundation is trying to remember what solid means after years of slow decay.
I catalog it all with the same precision I used to catalog exits, weapons, and threats. Except this time, I’m looking for problems I know how to fix. Concrete tasks with clear solutions. The kind of work that keeps your hands busy and your mind quiet.
Five years inside taught me more than how to survive.
I studied everything the prison library had, and Edwards brought me what they didn’t—engineering textbooks, electrical manuals, building codes, plumbing diagrams. Knowledge was the only thing they couldn’t take away, so I hoarded it.
Memorized it. Made it mine in a way nothing else could be.
I was allowed to take courses, get qualifications, and then once I was released I spent two years on construction sites, turning all the theory into experience.
I learned how buildings fit together, how systems work, and how to build something that lasts.
But this is different.
This isn’t just another job where I can put in my hours and walk away at the end of the day. Just another guy with a hammer and a paycheck. This is supposed to be permanent. Mine.
The word sticks in my throat.
Upstairs, in the bedroom I claimed, my duffel bag sits on the floor by the door, still packed and ready for me to grab and run. I haven’t opened the dresser drawers, or hung anything in the closet. I haven’t even made the bed with the sheets I bought earlier.
The moon cuts silver squares across the floor through windows that need cleaning.
Crossing the room, I sit at the desk Edwards must have put here and pull out paper so I can make a list of what I’ll need from the hardware store.
Materials. Tools. Each item another link in the chain tying me to this project, to this house, to this town.
A car passes by outside, headlights sweeping across the wall in a bright arc. I tense, heart rate spiking as I fight against the urge to find cover and disappear before the light finds me.
Prison reflexes. The kind that burrow so deep they become part of your wiring, firing off whether you want them or not.
But it’s not a spotlight searching the yard for inmates out of bounds. It’s not guards making rounds, or inmates looking for trouble. It’s just Saturday night traffic, someone driving home from dinner or a movie or wherever normal people go on weekend nights.
I add blackout curtains to the list.
My hands are shaking again. I press them flat against the desk, feeling the solid wood under my palms.
“What are you planning, Edwards?” The question comes out rough, directed at a dead man who can’t answer … or can he? Is that what the letter I haven’t opened yet says?
I make my way back downstairs, and find it where I left it on the kitchen table. With one jerky motion, I tear it open.
Ronan,
I wonder how long it took before you opened this letter. I hope your stubbornness didn’t keep you from reading it for too long, because I’m sure you have questions, and won’t have asked Mitchell.
I swallow at the accuracy of his words.
So let me answer them here, knowing that wherever you are reading this, you’re somewhere you feel it’s safe for you to focus on my words.
I should have done more. I know I’ve said that before. More than once. But it’s the truth, and a guilt I will live with until my dying day. Of course, if you’re reading this, then that day has come and gone. The irony of that is not lost on me.
You weren’t as invisible as you think you were. I saw you sleeping in the library. I saw how thin you were and how your hands would shake some mornings. I saw how you always wore the same clothes.
I wish I could say it was because I didn’t see it until you were gone, but that would be a lie. I saw everything as it happened, and I did nothing.
My fingers clench, crumping the edges of the paper.
I told myself it wasn’t my place. That if you were in trouble, you would ask for help. For a while I was certain you had a family member who was, at the very least, giving you a bed to sleep in.
There wasn’t. Even Lily couldn’t give me that.
I was wrong. We were all wrong. But by the time I realized how bad things were, you were already gone.
Gone. Such a small word for what happened. For the spiral into desperation that had me reaching for something that landed me in handcuffs.
I should have come to see you sooner. I should have done more than just bring books and talk about history. You rebuilt yourself there. And I’m very proud of being able to see the man you became. But you deserve more than just survival.
This house reminds me of you. It needs work, but it has good bones. So, now it’s yours, along with everything I’ve set up for you.
The comparison makes my throat close up.
Trust me when I say that the conditions I have set are to help you, not to hurt you. It’s not charity, and I haven’t done it out of guilt. I want to give you the opportunity to show small-minded people that you are much more than what they think you are.
This house will give you a chance to build something that’s yours. Take the six months. Fix what’s broken. At the end of it, no matter what you decide, the house is yours. No one can take it away from you.
But just think about things. Maybe not everything needs to stay buried. And sometimes you can make a home in a place you never thought you could.
The last lines punch through every defense I have left. I read the final words over and over.
I believe in you.
Harris.
He first turned up three months into my prison sentence. I sat in silence that first visit, and the second, and the third. But he kept coming back. Week after week, month after month. He brought books. Things to keep my mind busy.
I never understood why he bothered. Why a history teacher would waste his time on a kid who had already proven everyone right about what he’d become. I still don’t understand.
Just like seeing Lily again, everything about this feels like being thrown into the deep end when I don’t know how to swim.
And just like that my thoughts circle back to her.
The girl who kept me alive when I should have died in that abandoned factory. Who loved me despite every reason not to.
She’s out there somewhere in this town. Maybe a few streets away. She could be close enough that I could walk to her door if I let myself. While I’m here, with instructions from beyond the grave to build a life in a town that will wonder why this exile dared to return.
Tomorrow, I’ll have to start making this happen, and turn Edwards’ plan into something real. I’ll go to the hardware store, and face people who remember me. I’ll hear the whispers, see the stares, and feel the small-town judgment following me down every street.
But for now, I stand in this kitchen, and write lists that grow longer with each line in handwriting that gets shakier, because it’s either that or think about her and the question she asked me.
Why?