Chapter 30
The air between us is a storm waiting to break—thick, heavy, charged with everything we never said and everything we shattered. This was meant to be a stupid, carefree girls’ weekend. A plaster slapped over the cracks keeping the three of us apart.
Instead, Matt has come crashing back into my life like he never left, like he has any right to fuck with my head and my heart the way he does.
I want to scream. At him. At his father. At the universe and the cruel hand it keeps dealing me. I want answers—how he could stand there while his uncle and father tore me apart, how he could watch me drown without even throwing me a lifeline.
Clinging to the anger is easier than admitting the hollow ache beneath it. Easier than facing the truth that no amount of fury or distraction ever quite fills the space he left behind.
“You think I wanted this?” His voice is low and rough, cutting through the silence like a blade. “You think I wanted to be the guy who just stood there and watched you get pushed out? Who did nothing?”
I swallow. The hurt is a living thing beneath my ribs.
“Then why didn’t you say anything?” My voice trembles despite myself. “You knew me better than anyone. Yet you did nothing. Do you have any idea how much that tears me apart? Do you even care?”
For a long moment, he doesn’t answer. His eyes search mine, closed off in a way they never used to be. I step back because the closer I am, the harder it is to think, the harder it is to keep my anger intact.
“Because I didn’t know what to think. Hell, I still don’t,” he says at last. “It wasn’t about not caring, Lil’. If anything, I cared too fucking much. That’s the problem. I couldn’t trust my own judgement when it came to you.”
The words land like blows. I close my eyes, and everything—good and bad—flares behind my lids. For every moment he made me feel like I was the only thing that mattered, there were twice as many where he made me doubt it was ever really true.
Abbie once called us toxic; back then, I scoffed, rolled my eyes, and told her she didn’t understand. Now the word sits in my chest like a shard of glass, crawling into the corners and making itself at home.
“You weren’t there,” I say, each word brittle. “Not when I needed you. You let them call me trash. You let them throw me out. And you—” My voice breaks. I can’t even finish.
He swallows and steps closer, his voice rough. “I froze. I thought I was protecting you. I just… didn’t know how.”
“Protecting me?” I scoff. The laugh that escapes is ugly, fractured. “From what? You chose your family over me. Again. Just like you did every single time.”
“I’m sorry.” His voice cracks. “I hate that I left you to deal with it alone. I was a coward.”
A hot, ugly pebble of anger lodges in my throat. “You were supposed to be my home. My safe place. But you weren’t.” I shake my head. “When I needed you most, you abandoned me.”
He closes the distance until I can see the ridge of his jaw, the tiny scar by his lip. Green eyes flare, fierce and raw.
“I’m here now,” he says. “I’m not asking you to forgive me, not yet.
I know I haven’t earned it. But I can’t watch you walk away again, Lil’.
It would kill me. I fucked up. I see that now.
I just—” He exhales sharply. “I need you to talk to me. To help me understand what really happened. Those emails… they don’t make sense. ”
His words hang in the air, heavy with tremor.
Part of me wants to shove them back in his face, to tell him I hate him and leave and never look back.
I should stick to the plan. I should be colder.
But the tremble in his jaw and the quiet honesty in the brokenness of his voice claw at something stubborn and soft inside me that refuses to listen to reason when it comes to my stepbrother.
“Why now?” I whisper. “After everything, why come back now?”
He looks down, shame settling over him like a shadow. “Because I couldn’t stop thinking about you. About what I lost when I turned my back. And because I see now how much I hurt you.” A beat. “And because those emails won’t stop haunting me.”
My throat tightens. “It’s not just the past, Matt. It’s right now. You standing in front of me hurts. You not trusting me destroyed me. Your inability to defend me ruined everything we ever had. Can’t you see that?”
He forces himself to meet my eyes. “I fucked up. I know that. I’m so fucking sorry and I’ll never stop being sorry.
But you need to understand, I felt trapped by that contract.
I thought staying away would make it easier for you.
” His voice drops. “I was afraid—afraid if I didn’t, I’d burn everything down trying to keep you. ”
I stare at him, at the boy who was my entire world, and the man who became my deepest wound.
“Sometimes,” I say softly, “it feels like I’m the only one fighting to survive. Like none of this affected you in the slightest.”
“Christ, no.” His voice snaps, ragged. “Is that really what you think?” He drags a hand through his hair. “Baby, this past year has been hell. Not being able to see you—being cut off from you—drove me to things you would never imagine.”
A cold laugh claws out of me. “Oh, I know all about BegForMe. You think watching my streams means something? That it makes you anything other than a horny fucker who thought he still had a claim on my body?”
He flinches like I’ve struck him. For a moment, his face goes blank, then he steadies, pain and defensiveness warring across his features.
“Like sending you coffee because it makes you smile. Like having cameras in your flat, so I knew you were okay. Like taking care of that bitch of a teacher. Like vetting Jamie and Isabella, so I knew you’d be safe with them.”
My skin crawls at his admission. “You don’t get to dress surveillance up as concern. You ran background checks on my friends. You put cameras in my flat.” The words taste foul. “You watched me sleep, Matt. You watched me when I thought I was alone.”
“I know how it sounds. I know it’s fucked up. But I kept waking up convinced something bad would happen and no one would be there to stop it.” His voice roughens. “I was desperate, sweetheart. If so much as a hair on your head were hurt, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”
Fear flickers across his features and, for a second, I see the boy who’d once held my hand in a storm. But the damage is too deep to soften for ghosts.
“It wasn’t your place to make those decisions,” I say, my voice low and shaking.
Just when I thought Matt couldn’t possibly fuck up more, he proves me wrong.
“But once again, you took that choice from me. You built a cage around me even after you walked out of my life, and you think that’s fine because you were worried? ”
He closes his eyes. “I’m not asking you to excuse it. I did it because I still love you. I thought—stupidly—that if I controlled the risks, I could keep you safe.” His voice breaks. “But watching you only proved how wrong we were to think you could’ve been helping Jen. Those emails never fit you.”
“Control isn’t love, Matt.” The words fall like glass between us.
“Control is theft. You stole my agency. You made me smaller so your world could make sense.” My chest burns.
“And you standing here now, saying you finally see the lies in those emails after a year of watching me, tracking me, dissecting my life—” I shake my head. “That’s a kick in the teeth.”
I meet his eyes, unflinching.
“If you loved me, you wouldn’t have needed proof. You would’ve trusted me.”
He closes his eyes as a shaky breath works through him. When he opens them, they’re wet, and a knife twists in my chest.
“I—” He reaches for me, then stops, hand hovering like he’s afraid to make it worse. “I was terrified. Of being wrong. Of being right. Of losing you.” His jaw locks. “And I didn’t trust myself enough to stand up to my Da.”
I step back. The distance feels like a clean wound.
“You weren’t brave enough to choose me over them,” I correct. “You weren’t brave enough to be the man who stands between me and that darkness.”
His voice drops to a whisper. “I’m trying to be that man now.”
That small, trembling word—trying—isn’t enough to be his redemption. It’s a beginning, maybe, or it could be nothing more than empty words. The room holds us both, charged and fragile. I feel the old ache inside me—love braided with hurt, a thread that refuses to break even when I tell it to.
“I dreamed about you,” I admit. “Every night for months. Waking up gasping because you weren’t there. You let them take everything from me, and you didn’t say a damn word.”
He flinches, like the confession physically hurts him. “I wanted to come after you.”
“Then why didn’t you?” I cry, louder than I mean to, throwing my hands up. “Why did I have to grieve you like you were dead?”
His shoulders sag. “Because I was a coward,” he says again, his voice shredded. “And because every time my Da opened his mouth, I heard my mother’s voice instead.”
That stops me.
“I grew up watching her destroy my family,” he continues, words spilling faster now. “Watching her lie. Watching her manipulate him. Using his love against him until there was nothing left.” His jaw tightens.
“Then we found out Jen had done the same, and suddenly everyone was telling me you were doing it too—that you were playing us. Playing me. I was terrified… terrified that loving you meant becoming him. Weak. Blind. Ruined.”
My chest aches for the broken boy in front of me and for the girl who loved him anyway.
“I wanted to believe you,” he says hoarsely. “But I was so fucking afraid that loving you would make me like him. So I let myself believe the worst. And I thought… staying away would make it easier for you.”
“Don’t you dare say any of this was for my sake,” I whisper, fury and grief tangling in my throat. “You stayed silent because it was easier than choosing me. Because your path was already mapped out and I didn’t fit on it.”
He closes his eyes; his breath comes shallow. When he opens them, every inch of regret and self-loathing is there for me to see. The room crackles, years of hurt and months of yearning mixing like a powder keg.
I want to hate him. I want to slam the door and never look back. But some ghosts don’t leave—they linger where they always have, quiet and stubborn. They haunt the corners of your sleep and the hollow where you used to keep hope.
I take a shaky breath. The weight of years presses on me, but a small, desperate spark stirs, maybe—maybe—things can be different. Not because he said sorry, not because he wants me back tonight, but because the truth is coming out and he’s standing here, finally owning it.
“I don’t know if I can trust you,” I admit finally.
He nods, the motion shaky, almost painful.
“Then tell me how to earn it,” he says, voice breaking. “Tell me what you need me to do.”
My laugh comes out hollow—brittle, sharp, and nothing like the sound he used to pull from me.
“You start by stopping everything you did in secret,” I say, voice tight. “You start by handing me back the life you stole. You start by telling the truth about everything. And even then…” I swallow hard. “Even then, it might not be enough.”
For a second, something flickers across his face—panic, regret, the desperate urge to fix what can’t be neatly stitched back together. He looks like he might argue, might promise me the world, might fall to his knees and beg me to let him try.
Instead, he exhales—slow, wrecked—the sound heavy with consequence. His chin dips in a single, deliberate nod.
And just like that, the air between us changes.
The future feels thin and dangerous, stretched tight like a thread that might snap with one wrong breath. I don’t know where we go from here, if we go anywhere at all. But for now, we stand in the silence between apology and consequence, between the ruins we made and the hope we don’t dare name.
Two people who never stopped loving each other, trying to navigate the damage that loving in silence left behind.