15. Keira
KEIRA
T he tea is warm in my hands, sweetened just enough to chase away the bitterness of being held in a place where freedom feels like a memory I can’t quite touch.
Nina smuggled me out of the basement and served me tea like it was contraband—still steaming, the smell alone making my throat ache with longing. When she handed me the delicate porcelain cup, she leaned in close and winked, her voice a whisper soaked in mischief.
“Against the rules,” she said, as if breaking them was a pastime she refused to outgrow.
And in that moment, I saw it.
Not the age in her hands, or the careful grace in the way she moved—but something sharper. Livelier. A flicker of rebellion dancing just behind her eyes.
She might have decades on me, but I get the distinct feeling that Nina could run circles around the youngest of us. That she’d out-joke a teenager, out-scheme a con artist, and still have time left over to steal the last cookie from the jar without ever getting caught .
There’s a wildness in her that hasn’t dulled. A spark that makes me think she was the kind of girl who climbed rooftops in her Sunday best and smiled while setting the world on fire.
And now? Now she’s sipping tea with a prisoner like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Like she knows just how to slip past locked doors—and hearts—with a smirk and a story.
After I showered and changed, Nina didn’t take me back downstairs.
She didn’t say a word—just handed me a fresh set of clothes folded with military precision, and waited by the door while I dressed behind the old screen in her room.
When I emerged, hair damp and clinging to my neck, she simply nodded and led me hobbling down the hallway with that quiet authority that didn’t ask for obedience—it expected it.
I guess she realized I was in no condition to try to run again. Not now, anyway.
Instead of the basement, she turned into a small sitting room where dim light filtered through thick curtains. The room felt dusty with memory and smelt like cedar and lemon oil. There was a velvet chaise near the hearth. Books lining the walls like old friends keeping vigil.
“Sit,” she said, gesturing with a tilt of her head, and I obeyed without a word.
The fire was already lit, low and crackling, its heat sinking into my skin like it belonged there. I sank into the armchair closest to it, the fabric soft, worn-in. The kind of chair I’d gladly fall asleep in without meaning to.
And for the first time in days, I felt it—warmth.
Not just from the fire, but something deeper. Thicker. Comfort soaked into the wallpaper and tucked into the seams of the room. Like someone had taken extra care here; someone saw me and decided, just for a moment, I didn’t have to be afraid .
It slipped into my bones, slow and unexpected, softening something that had been clenched tight in my chest since the night everything changed. I didn’t realize how cold I’d been until the warmth made me feel human again.
Nina sips her own tea with the grace of someone who’s survived too much to be shaken by the sight of a girl like me, barefoot and bruised in more ways than one. She watches me closely, not like I’m a prisoner, but like I’m a question she’s already halfway to answering.
“So,” she says eventually, setting her cup down with a gentle clink. “Keira.” She tilts her head. “How exactly do you know my grandson?”
And there it is. The question she’s been dying to know the answer to. The reason behind her kindness; she’s fishing for information he probably won’t give her. Otherwise, she’d know exactly what I’m doing here.
I grip my teacup tighter. The warmth suddenly feels too much.
Nina waits—composed, unhurried—but there’s an edge beneath her softness. A quiet persistence. She’s not just making conversation; she’s excavating.
And whether she means to or not, her words land like fingertips pressing into a bruise I’ve been trying to forget is there. Gentle—but deep. Digging into places I don’t let people go.
“I don’t,” I say softly.
Her eyes narrow just slightly. “You don’t?”
“I mean… not well.”
“Strange. He’s been away for many years, and then he turns up with you in tow. And you claim not to know him…”
I look down at my tea, my voice quiet. “You forget that I’m the one sitting in a cell in your basement.”
“And you don’t know why you’re there?” she asks .
“You’d have to ask him that.”
She leans in just a touch. “Did you know each other before he brought you here?”
I hesitate. A split-second too long. She knows there’s more. Knows I’m holding something back. Probably suspects she won’t get it from me today.
But still, she waits. Still, she watches. I look her dead in the eyes and lie with the softest truth I’ve ever spoken. Not the kind of lie that feels cruel or twists in your gut and sours your breath. This one tastes like truth, even as it burns in my throat.
“I think he has an unhealthy obsession with me.”
Her eyes stay locked on mine. Unmoving. Unshaken.
That same warmth in her face, but something flickers just beneath the surface—concern, maybe.
Like she’s quietly flipping through a thousand different memories of Jayson, trying to find where I fit in.
She leans back in her chair with a slow, thoughtful sigh.
“Fair enough,” she murmurs, as though that’s all the answer she needs for now.
And just like that, the tension slips, melting into the steam that curls between us. It softens. But it doesn’t vanish. Because I can still feel it.
The line I drew. The secret buried beneath my skin like a poison. The memory of Jayson’s hand trembling ever so slightly as he pointed a gun at my head—and the decision he made when he didn’t pull the trigger.
That moment doesn’t belong to anyone else. It’s mine. And I swore I’d take it to the grave. Not even his grandmother will know.
I take a slow sip of tea, let the warmth coat my throat, and set the cup back down gently before I speak again.
“I have a question for you.”
Nina arches a brow. “What’s that?”
“Tell me about Jayson. ”
Her mouth quirks, wry. “That’s not a question.”
“Tell me anyway.”
She studies me again, and for a moment, I think she’ll dodge telling me. Wrap her memories in anecdotes and old woman riddles and brush it off like she would the weather. But she doesn’t. She leans forward, rests her elbows on her knees, and whispers into the room.
“He’s been gone a long time. But when he was here…”
The fire crackles behind us. Her voice softens.
“He was a boy who felt too much. Thought too hard. Always quiet, yet observing. He always tried to fix things that were broken, even if it ruined him in the process.”
I swallow hard. Something in my chest aches.
“He loved this house once,” she continues, looking around the room like nostalgia has her in a chokehold. “The land. The woods. The quiet. But love doesn’t survive violence untouched. Not here.”
She pauses. Like the memory hurts.
“His father—” she stops. Starts again, slower. “Was not a…kind man. He blamed Jayson for alot of things you couldn’t hold a young child accountable for. Tried to make him into something Jayson wasn’t ready for.”
My fingers curl into the hem of my sweater. I don’t speak.
“You may see him as a monster,” Nina says gently. “And maybe sometimes, he is. But only because someone taught him that monsters survive longer than boys with hearts too big for their bodies.”
I blink hard. Look away. Because it shouldn’t matter to me either way. But it does. It matters too much.
“Is that why he brought me here?” I ask quietly. “Because he doesn’t know what to do with that softness?”
Nina tilts her head, eyes glinting with something old and aching. “You know why you’re here, Keira. But I think he brought you here because he’s terrified of what he sees in you.”
I swallow that down. The ache. The guilt. The heat. And for the first time in days, I wonder if Jayson and I aren’t so different after all. We’re just two people taught to survive in all the wrong ways.
The air thickens around us. I look into the fire, but all I can see is him.
Jayson. The way he doesn’t quite meet my eyes when he talks.
The way his jaw clenches like it’s holding secrets his mouth won’t let go of.
How he stood in that bedroom doorway and raised a gun to my head—shoulders squared, fury in every line of his body— but he didn ’ t pull the trigger.
He could’ve ended me, but he didn’t. And ever since, I’ve been caught in this slow, torturous unraveling—falling into something sharp and silent and inevitable.
I shouldn’t be feeling this. Not for the man who locked me in a box and hid me from the world.
But somehow… I do. And hearing Nina say it—say that once, there was a boy with too much heart—it shatters something inside me.
Because I know what it’s like to feel too much but be a prisoner of your own circumstance. I know it.
He pretends to be stone, but I’ve seen it. The tremor in his hands. The way he watches me like he’s waiting for a reason not to forgive himself.
I finish my tea and place the cup down with care.
“He still lives here?” I ask quietly, even though I already know the answer.
Nina doesn’t speak right away. But her eyes flick toward the stairs. I follow her gaze—nothing there but shadow. She smiles again, softer this time.
“I think he never left,” she says.
And that’s when I feel it. That subtle shift in the air. The weight of a presence behind the walls. My breath catches, throat tightening. Because I know he’s there. Listening. Watching. Bleeding in silence like he always does.
I don’t turn my head. The ache in my chest is enough.
Heavy. Unforgiving. And laced with longing.
I want to reach for him. I want to pull him out of whatever past he’s buried himself in and ask him if he remembers what it feels like to feel.
But I don’t. Instead, I sit back. I let the silence hold. And I let the fire burn.