37. Keira
KEIRA
I wake to darkness—and the afterglow of a body wrecked in the best way.
Muscles sore, skin still tingling where he kissed, bit, claimed.
The sheets are twisted around my legs, damp with heat and sex, and they still smell like him: cedar, sweat, danger.
My body hums like an instrument finely tuned by his hands, and for a heartbeat, I remember what it means to feel wanted. To be safe.
I must’ve drifted off between his last whispered “mine” and the heavy lull of his hand trailing down my spine. I don’t remember when. Only that I slept harder than I have in months. Maybe years.
But safety never stays. Not in my world.
It shatters with a scream.
My scream.
High-pitched and feral, yanked from my throat like it’s trying to rip my soul out on the way up. I jolt upright, chest heaving, drenched in sweat. My lungs can’t draw in air fast enough. My fingers claw the sheets like they might rip the nightmare off me. But it’s still there. It never left.
The images hit in jagged, strobe-lit bursts .
Riley in the hallway. Not just sobbing—screaming.
Her mouth wide, eyes swollen shut. Her knees bruised from crawling, her panties torn and twisted halfway down her thighs. Her voice gone from crying for help no one gave her.
A red leather couch.
Cracked with age. Slick with things I don’t want to name.
I can feel it under me—icy cold and sticky, clinging to the backs of my thighs. A camera clicks behind my left shoulder. I turn to run and ? —
There’s a blue door.
Always that damn blue door.
Chipped paint. Blood beneath the handle.
Then the voice.
“She’s a problem.”
A low rasp, like gravel dragged across concrete. Measured. Male. I know it. I hate that I know it. It coils around my throat, and just like that—I’m back there. In the dark. In the silence. In that cellar that reeked of mildew and bleach and something far worse.
“Riley, come back,” I whisper, her name a curse on my tongue.
My breath comes in ragged gasps. Where am I? Where was I?
The walls spin. Shadows crawl. The sheets don’t feel safe anymore. They feel like restraints. My nails dig into my own thighs just to stay tethered to now.
Then the mattress shifts.
A weight. A presence.
Strong arms wrap around me like chains—but warm. Grounding. Real. A heartbeat pulses against my spine, deep and steady like a war drum.
“You’re okay,” he says, voice low and rough with sleep, but instantly alert. “Easy, Keira. Breathe. I’ve got you.”
He brushes sweat-damp hair from my face. His fingers don’t flinch when they feel how cold I am. He doesn’t ask. Doesn’t prod. He knows better .
Instead, he becomes the barricade. A wall of muscle and heat and quiet command that holds me together when I feel like splintered glass.
“Breathe with me,” he murmurs. “In. Out. That’s it. Good girl.”
The tremors in my limbs start to slow, but the pictures are still painted on the backs of my eyelids. And worse—they want to stay. My mind keeps looping them like a snuff film I never agreed to star in.
I press my face into Jayson’s neck, let his scent choke out the rest of the world. His hands move across my back in slow, grounding strokes, tracing patterns only he knows.
Time passes. I don’t know how much. Minutes. Hours. The clock is meaningless here.
Eventually, sleep finds me again. But it doesn’t come kindly. It drags me under like an undertow. Keeps me half-dreaming, half-remembering.
Riley’s screams echo in the cracks of my skull.
The blue door creaks open.
And somewhere behind it, a monster smiles.
Morning drags gray light across the ceiling like a dirty rag. Cold and colorless. It stains everything—the walls, the sheets, the fragile peace left in the wake of Jayson’s touch.
He’s already up.
A dark silhouette against the wide glass doors leading to the balcony. The soft hush of his voice curls through the room, low and businesslike, but clipped at the edges like something’s bleeding underneath.
His phone is to his ear, his bare chest rising with each breath. Scars and fresh scratches claw across his back, angry red and fading violet—souvenirs from last night’s frenzy. From me.
I study him. The tension in his shoulders. The way his free hand flexes at his side, like he’s gripping invisible weapons. Always half a second from war.
When he notices I’m awake, he ends the call without ceremony and strides back to the bed like I’m the only thing in the room that matters.
He leans down. Plants a kiss on my forehead. Soft. Possessive. It doesn’t ask permission. It claims.
“I’ll have breakfast sent up,” he murmurs, thumb brushing beneath my eye like he’s wiping away a nightmare I haven’t told him about.
I nod, but my throat feels full of razor wire. Too tight to speak. Too fragile to hold a single word.
When he disappears into the hallway, I drag myself out of bed. My body aches from the night before, but not in a bad way. It’s the sort of ache that leaves me sore in the best way.
I tug one of his shirts off the chair—black cotton, too big, worn soft with time. It falls to mid-thigh, swallowing my shape. It smells like him. Sandalwood and cedar and something darker that curls into the hollow of my chest and doesn’t leave.
The window seat calls to me like a ghost. I curl into it, knees up, bare legs pressed to the cold cushion, and stare out at the morning that has no right being this quiet. My fingertips find the frosted glass, trembling against it.
My thoughts turn violent.
Blue door. Red couch. A tall man in a suit. That voice…that voice…
The images burn across my mind like smoke.
They circle, fray at the edges, try to melt into mist. But I won’t let them. I can’t. I hold them in place and press harder, like if I just think hard enough, the rest will come pouring out. Like blood from a reopened wound .
Basement.
Two steps down.
Concrete colder than bone.
The air choked with mildew and bleach. A single bulb flickering overhead like it’s afraid to stay lit.
Riley’s bracelet.
Silver beads. A missing clasp. I see it on the ground. One bead crushed, like it was stepped on. Or stomped.
My father’s voice.
Not yelling. Commanding. The kind of voice that doesn’t allow disobedience.
“Do what has to be done.”
My nails dig into my thigh.
My breath comes sharp, shallow.
I remember the couch. I remember the way the leather stuck to my skin. My dress bunched around my waist. Cold fingers digging into my hips.
I remember not screaming. Because screaming made it worse.
I blink back into the present only when the door clicks softly open.
Jayson enters with a tray balanced in one hand. His other pushes the door shut behind him like he’s locking the world out for me. Always for me.
He doesn’t say anything at first—just sets the tray down on the low table near the window seat. Coffee. Toast. Fruit I won’t touch.
Then he kneels beside me, his eyes scanning my face. They flick from my mouth to my hands to the twitch in my jaw I can’t control.
He knows. He doesn’t know everything, but he knows enough.
“Eat,” he says gently. “Then shower. I’ve got meetings, but I’m not far. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. ”
His lips press to mine—slow, grounding, certain. A kiss that promises something no one in my life has ever given me.
“Nothing will touch you here, Keira.”
I nod. Because I want to believe him.
I desperately want to believe him.
He leaves again with a last look, the door shutting behind him like the final note in a song I don’t know how to play.
And I’m alone. Not with the silence. With the memories. And they’re louder than anything.
I push the tray aside and press my forehead to the glass.
The world outside is moving. Trees shifting. Wind stirring. Normal. Alive. The world keeps moving, even as my heart stops.
But my insides are a riot. My ribs are a cage and the beast inside is clawing to get out.
One word tumbles through my head like a death sentence.
Problem.
That’s what he called me. The voice from the basement. Gravel and disdain.
“She’s a problem.”
Not a person. Not a girl.
A problem.
And problems?
They aren’t comforted.
They aren’t protected.
They don’t get second chances or quiet mornings or lovers who kiss their foreheads.
Problems are meant to be solved. Eliminated. Buried.
And every time I close my eyes, I feel the ground shifting beneath my feet. Because no matter how far I run or how many layers I put between me and the truth… the memories still breathe life. And they remember me just as clearly as I remember them.