Chapter 30 Elle #2
I kiss him, holding him close, so he can’t pull away.
Hate was never what tied us together. It was this.
This inevitable pull we keep choosing. I ride him harder.
He hisses as his hands twitch at my hips, still waiting, still holding back.
I feel all of it. What I take from him. What he gives to me.
My breath stumbles over the next question, but I can’t stop now. I don’t want to. “Why were you there, Sterling?”
“It was Clo,” he says through gritted teeth. “She sent me there, gave the order.”
I roll my hips again, coaxing a confession he can’t stop.
“I wasn’t told much,” he grits out. “Only that it had to be done. No mistakes.”
My fingers trace his broad shoulders. “But you made one,” I whisper.
His throat works around a nervous swallow. “I didn’t know your mother would be there,” he says. “Didn’t know she’d defend him.”
Another breath breaks from his throat as he shudders all over.
“She wasn’t supposed to be a part of it,” he says. “But she fought for him. She was a witness. So I couldn’t leave her there.”
The ache in his voice splinters through me. “And after?” I whisper.
Sterling’s hands slide down to my calves. “I thought it was over,” he rasps. “Until I saw you. You bolted out of the door with your brother crying in your arms. There was fire all over you. Your feet, your legs…”
The world tilts. Time slows. “You saw me,” I echo, blinking through the haze.
“I saw her too,” he says, hoarse. “Clo. With you. With him. Taking you both.”
His breathing roughens. The haze in my mind lifts, flowing away with the rattling sound of windows. I have another piece of my past I never thought I’d ever remember clearly until now.
Sterling goes on, “I thought she was tying up loose ends. But she wasn’t. She was keeping you.”
I freeze for a heartbeat, my whole body trembling against his. Keep us. For what?
I grind harder, not for mere pleasure, but to silence the sob that’s clawing its way up my throat.
Sterling groans, the sound desperate. “I ran,” he says, deep and pained. “I ran because I couldn’t be a part of it anymore. I ran to this shack. I ran to survive what I’d done. Ripped myself away from her, from my family, before she could own me too.”
His words cut into me. He saw the monster his mother was becoming, and he chose to run, even if it cost him everything.
It’s a price I wasn’t willing to pay when I was in the same shoes with my own mother.
The memories flash like dancing flames. My mother screaming at me while I shielded my younger brother.
Things thrown at the two of us while I tried to reason with her.
They all come back with the confession Sterling gives me, leaving me open and raw.
“But after…” His voice draws me back to the present. “After I saw you—what I’d done—I started digging. I had to know.”
I slow my movements, feeling the weight of every word he says.
“Clo wanted full control,” he says between ragged breaths. “Your father created Kys. He made the formula.”
The breath that leaves my lungs comes out as a sharp, painful rush.
My father. He made the drug that destroyed everything.
Sterling tips his head back against the headboard. The blindfold clings to his skin now, soaked at the edges. His body shudders under the weight of what he’s telling me.
“She needed him out of the way,” he says. “She needed to know how to make it, to sell it, to control it. She needed your father gone.”
I move harder now, hips grinding with too much need to name. But there’s no name for this grief. No name for this fury. All I can do is bury it in motion. Hold us both here so the past doesn’t win.
His eyes are hidden behind the blindfold, but I know what’s underneath.
I know what I’d see if I took it off. All the pieces he won’t show anyone else.
And somehow, even through the horror of what he’s confessing, through the blood and fire and ruin that’s shaped us both, I don’t pull away. I won’t ever pull away from Sterling.
He lets me take what I need from him, however I need it. And I take everything. Because he’s mine. And I’ve always belonged to him, even when I didn’t know it yet.
The silence from our lips grows thick between us, stretched thin by the weight of everything we’ve said. Then he whispers, so quiet I almost miss it. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, Elle.”
His words rattle me harder than the storm does to the shack we’ve called home. But what I notice next rattles me more. The fabric over his eyes darkens, slow and wetter.
Tears. He’s crying, silent sobs that slip into the cloth and soak through. My heart caves in on itself. Because this is stoic, untouchable Sterling—cracked open in my hands, breaking without a fight, and letting me witness what no one else will ever see.
I lean in close. Forehead to his. Breath to breath. I don’t try for comfort. I don’t try for empty words, hoping they’d soothe us. There’s no mercy here or a fix for how our pasts played out.
Rocking slower on his lap, I slip my palms up to cradle his beautiful face.
I catch the tears with my thumbs, dragging them away even as they keep falling.
There are no words that can salve the pain we went through.
Though, I can promise one thing that will always be true.
“I’m here, Sterling. I’m not going anywhere. ”
I keep moving. I think if I stop now, everything inside me might spill out and never find its way back. It keeps me present in this moment, giving us something whole in the middle of everything that’s broken.
Sterling stays still beneath me, holding my hips so tight as though he doesn’t trust himself to let go. His chest rises in stutters. His lips part like he means to speak, but nothing comes out.
I reach for the knot at the back of his head and loosen it, watching the blindfold slip away. His lashes are damp. His cheeks streaked. But his eyes are wide now, seeing me. And I see him too.
I ride him slower, rocking in a rhythm that feels like breathing. “You burned down the only life I knew,” I whisper.
He flinches as if expecting me to finish with a cut. But I don’t.
“It needed to burn, Sterling. My parents weren’t good people.”
His whole body goes still. His teary eyes never leave mine.
“But you,” I say, chasing the thought before it disappears. “You never lied about who you are. You may have hidden, but I always saw you, Sterling. I’ve seen every part of you, even when you bury yourself in shadows, behind masks, or inside your silence.”
His hands slide up, his gray eyes stripped bare. Full of every ache he’s ever carried alone. He’ll never be alone again.
“I see you, Sterling, and I would walk through that fire again,” I whisper against his mouth, “if it meant finding you at the end of it.”
Sterling’s hands tense around me. He grits his teeth, tears still trailing down his cheeks and chin. “I love you, Elle.” He furrows his brows, searching my stunned gaze. “I love you,” he says again, sounding so devastated for such lovely words. “If I could go back… If I could take it all from you…”
I shake my head, my thumbs brushing away the remnants of his tears. “Sterling, you were never what I needed saving from.”
He groans a low sound. And when we fall apart together—when our bodies shatter—my heart feels full as much as it hurts. Sterling and I were twisted in burning ruins. But we’re here, surviving it together.
“My memories…” I gasp. “Sometimes I can’t see through the smoke—”
My voice fractures, but I don’t stop.
“Sometimes I’m so lost in it… So scared I’ll never find myself again.” I try to breathe through the fear. “But I always find my way back to you.”
He buries his face in my neck, breathing me in.
“That’s why…” I say. “I love you too.”
His breath is uneven against my skin. Eventually, our bodies slow, our breathing steadies.
Yet my heart thunders, same as his. “Stay with me,” he says, low and raw. “Please, Elle.”
I wasn’t planning on ever leaving him. Smiling, I kiss his hair while I catch my breath.
He looks up, silver eyes shining with tears. “I don’t want you loving some idea of me,” he says. “If you stay…I want you to know all of me.”
I brush my fingers along the side of his face, feeling the tremble he tries to hide. “You’ve already trusted me with so much,” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “There’s more,” he mutters. “Things I put away. Things I didn’t want to bring with me from my past.”
He drags in a breath, and when he speaks again, it’s barely a rasp.
“Old journals.” His eyes look away, then back to me. “They’re here. In the shack. Buried where I thought no one would ever find them.”
His hand grips my hip, and the tremor in his body comes back much worse, but I know he’s being brave, showing all of himself to me.
“They’re yours, Elle,” he says. “You can see the parts of me I don’t know how to explain. The parts I don’t know how to kill.”
His eyes close like he’s bracing for the worst. But I tell him, “I want all of you, Sterling, especially the parts you thought you had to hide.”
He exhales, still shaking. I hold him through it, through the breaking and the mending. I kiss him, soft and slow. Sterling stiffens for a second. But then he leans into it. When I pull back to let us breathe, I smile, warm and sure.
We stay like this for a while, until he slips out of bed. I watch as he goes to a loose floorboard. He lifts it and from underneath pulls out a bundle of old journals, bound in twine, the edges worn with time and dust. He hands them to me with quiet trust.
I cradle them gently and settle into the pillows, untying the twine with careful fingers. The pages inside have become rough with time, the ink faded, but his handwriting is unmistakable—wild and uneven, driven by too many emotions and nowhere to put them.
I read the first few pages, absorbing pieces of the boy he used to be, the pain he never gave voice to, and the things he kept buried in ink. So much pain, rage, and loneliness for one boy to carry all alone.
While I read, he moves through the room.
I hear the rustle of cloth and then the sounds of musical strings.
When I glance up, he’s found a violin. Beside it rests his old mask.
The mask from my earliest memory of him.
Its snarling face is a symbol of a feeling I once couldn’t name.
But now I see it clearly. It was never a monster’s face.
It’s been an armor for a boy who was trying to survive a cruel world that demanded too much of him.
I set the journal aside and reach for the mask.
It’s splintered along one edge, faded with red paint, and the strap unraveled.
Nearby, I find Sterling’s old repair kit for it.
Needles, thread, a few saved scraps of fabric.
My hands know what to do. I stitch the strap back together carefully, my fingers steady and my heart quiet.
I don’t try to restore it to what it was. I let it keep the damage.
Beside me, Sterling tunes his violin until a song fills the air.
The notes move through the room, carrying hope.
I close my eyes for a second, letting it wash over me.
It sounds so familiar, but I can’t place it.
And that’s okay. My memory is as imperfect as the frayed threads of our pasts that tie Sterling and I together.
I suppose that’s who we are—imperfect apart but perfect together.
I blink up at him. “What song are you playing, my love?” I ask.
His bow glides across the strings as he answers, “The Swan.”
My smile lifts. The name fits. Between songs, he kisses me leisurely. I return them and run my fingers through the light silver in his dark hair. There’s so much more silver now.
We spend the rest of the night this way, mending what we thought was beyond repair.
Him with his violin. Me with his mask. And both of us with each other’s secrets.
Alive despite it all, and finally free from what tried to break us.
The past is what it is. But right now, I’m where I want to be. Here at his side. Heart close to his.