Chapter 25 Knox #3
She looks away. "I can't. Because if I start talking, I won't know where to stop. Because some of the things I've seen, the rooms I've been in, the names I know—they're not things you walk away from untouched. And you…" Her voice breaks. "You still look at me like I'm—" She cuts herself off.
"Like you're what? Like you're mine? Because you are."
"Like I'm clean," she says, the word ripping out like it hurts. "Like nothing ugly ever touched me. And my father's hands aren't all over everything I used to be. If you knew… if you knew all of it you wouldn't be able to unsee it."
"Sloane…"
"You don't get to compare this to that one guy you recognized outside a grocery store. This is bigger than that, Knox. It's older. It's dirtier. It's—"
"Careful." My voice comes out low, sharp, wounded.
Her chin lifts in challenge, but fear flickers beneath the defiance.
"Don't stand there and act like what I went through was some awkward run-in with an old friend.
" My voice goes dangerous in a way I don't usually let her hear.
"I didn't come home with nostalgia, Sloane.
I came home with blood on my hands and nightmares I still don't have names for.
" The words hang between us. "You think you're the only one who learned to get quiet because talking hurt too damn much? "
"That's not what I—"
"It's exactly what you just did."
"You still don't see it," she whispers, but it comes out fragile. An admission she didn't mean to give me.
"Then help me." Almost pleading.
Her eyes shine. "I can't." Choked. "Because if I say it out loud, it becomes real. If it's real, I can't take it back. I can't un-live it. Can't make you un-hear it. I can't—"
"Sloane." I reach for her hand without thinking. She flinches. Like my touch burns. That dagger goes in clean and cruel. "You keep telling me you're fine, but you're shaking right now."
"So what?" Voice breaking. "What do you want me to do? Spill everything so you can look at me differently? So you can see exactly why I'm not—" Her throat closes.
"Not what? Not good? Not clean? Not worthy? Say it."
She lets out a small, strangled sound, then snaps. "I can't do this. Not right now. Not with you looking at me like that."
"Sloane—"
She shakes her head violently, grabs a pillow and the spare blanket from the trunk at the foot of the bed. "I need space. Before I do something I can't fix."
"Sloane." My voice cracks. "Please don't go."
She freezes in the doorway with her shoulders rigid, but doesn't look back. "That's the problem," she whispers. "You asking me to stay feels worse than leaving." The door closes. Soft. Final. Like she doesn't trust herself to be loud.
I'm left standing there, realizing this is the closest she's ever come to telling me the truth and the farthest she's ever felt from me.
I could push. Force it. Demand she stay.
I don't. Because that admission, you asking me to stay feels worse than leaving, is the truest thing she's given me tonight.
The guest room door clicks shut down the hall.
I sit on the edge of our bed, hands dangling between my knees, staring at the pillow she left behind.
The house feels wrong. Too quiet after the sirens, the screaming, the wet sound of Donovan's breathing.
My brain replays the night on a loop. The flash of the explosion.
Victor's voice breaking over Olivia's name.
Leo's glassy eyes. Arden's stillness. Donovan's ugly smile.
Malachi's fury. Sloane's shaking hands. The way she flinched at Alice's name. I can't.
Once, years ago, fresh back from deployment, I ran into a different man from my unit, not the guy in the grocery store, in a gas station bathroom. High as a kite, pupils blown, nose bleeding. He looked at me like I was a ghost.
The weight of that version of me slammed into the man I was trying to be, and I spent an hour in my truck after, hands shaking on the steering wheel.
She doesn't know that story. I've never given it to her.
Just like she's never handed me the worst of hers.
That's what makes it hurt. We keep building a life over things we refuse to name.
Now she's down the hall, alone with her ghosts, because she thinks letting me see them will change how I look at her.
Outside, sirens wail again. In the basement of the clubhouse, a monster we should have let die is breathing because my wife wouldn't let him go. My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
Nash. Two words. He coded.
I stare at the ceiling. Sloane told them she wouldn't bring him back a third time. I wait for the follow-up. It comes ninety seconds later.
Didn't make it.
I set the phone down. The world has one less monster breathing tonight.
Down the hall, behind a closed door, the woman I married is coming apart in quiet, controlled pieces.
I love her. I still don't know how to fix this. So I do the only thing I can tonight. I lie back on the bed we're supposed to share, stare into the dark, and stay awake. Waiting for morning and the next fight we're not ready for.