Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ANDI
Telling Luke I don’t love him is the hardest, ugliest thing I’ve forced myself to do since the night I landed in a psychiatric hospital. And I didn’t even say the words. Not really. I just said no when he asked if I loved him.
But he knew. He heard the lie in the spaces between my breaths. Luke Woods may not always listen when it matters, but he can read me like scripture when he’s close enough.
That’s why he’s trying to make me say it to his face. If I can look him in the eye and destroy us with a sentence, he can accept it as truth.
I can’t.
No matter what’s happened, I can’t end us with those words. If this mess goes the way my instincts keep screaming it will, I can’t die with a lie like that on my tongue and Luke’s broken expression as my last memory.
I let go of his hands and push to my feet because when I cry, I can’t breathe sitting down. My nose clamps shut, my chest tightens, and everything inside me turns into panic. Standing forces my body to cooperate. Standing gives me air.
Luke rises with me immediately, like we’re tethered.
I almost laugh, and the sound surprises me because it’s not humor so much as disbelief. Part of me recognized it earlier. When he walked me to his truck, when he buckled me in like I was a seatbelt and not a human being, I had a feeling I was being kidnapped.
But he’s right about one thing. I know Luke would never physically hurt me.
I pace. Not because I’m trying to escape, but because my thoughts need motion or they’ll eat me alive. Luke shifts into position, broad shoulders squared, body angled between me and the door. Blocking it. Guarding it. As if I’m the threat.
He thinks he’s controlling the room.
I let him have that illusion. I have bigger problems than Luke’s protective ego. Like convincing a man who climbs into boxing rings for fun that he needs protecting from me.
I stop pacing and face him, giving him the look I use at the youth center when the room needs to quiet down and listen. “You’re not going to like what I have to say.”
“And that’s different from just now…how?” he asks dryly, but there’s a soft edge to it. A thread of the humor he knows I love.
I feel my mouth twitch. “Luke, I can’t tell you I don’t love you. You already know that.”
His expression shifts instantly, relief breaking through like sunlight through clouds. He smiles like he’s already won. “Then tell me you do. I’ll accept that too.”
My throat tightens.
“I do love you,” I admit, and I feel like I’m stepping off a ledge. “I never stopped.” My voice shakes, but I don’t take it back. “But we can’t get back together, Luke.”
His jaw clenches, and his body subtly locks into that fighting stance, the one that says he’s ready for impact and ready to give it back. He plants himself harder in front of the door, like intimidation will change my mind.
“And why is that, Andi?”
I swallow. “Promise not to laugh?”
One eyebrow lifts. He’s already halfway amused, which makes me want to throw something at his head. “This should be interesting. I promise I’ll do my best not to laugh. But I’m not going to break another promise by saying I won’t when I don’t even know what you’re about to say.”
Fair.
“I have to protect you,” I say.
His lips twitch. He sucks his cheeks in for a second like he’s trying to physically trap the laugh in his body. He looks down at his feet, shoulders bouncing once, twice.
“Go ahead,” I concede, because I can’t stop it, anyway. “You can laugh.”
The laugh that bursts out of him is full-bodied and warm, the kind that rumbles through his chest and makes the air feel lighter just by existing.
It hits me straight in the heart because it sounds like us.
It sounds like nights that weren’t complicated, like hands that didn’t tremble, like love that didn’t come with consequences.
“I’m sorry,” he says quickly, still grinning despite himself. He wipes a hand over his mouth like it’ll erase the smile. “I’m sorry, baby. It just…came out funny. Care to explain that revelation?”
I go still. The smile drops off my face, and he sobers like he felt the temperature change.
“Luke, it's difficult to discuss this. I know it sounds ridiculous, and I know I’m going to have a hard time convincing you I have to protect you, but I need you to hear me.”
His expression turns serious, almost gentle. “First of all, I’m sorry for laughing. It’s obviously not funny to you. It was just the way it sounded at first.”
“I know,” I say quickly. “I don’t blame you for that.”
He shifts restlessly, as if being still is painful for him. “As much as you want to protect me, I want to protect you. I just don’t understand why you think I need it.”
That’s the problem.
I don’t want to tell him. I don’t want to drag him into the truth and watch him become a target just because he loves me.
But I also can’t keep hiding behind vague warnings and expect him to let go.
“Can you sit down and let me explain?” I ask. “I promise I won’t make a run for the door,” I add a small smile to take the sting out, and he doesn’t even pretend he doesn’t know what I mean.
He sits, but not on the couch.
In the chair closest to the door.
Of course.
I take another breath, then decide the fastest way through is straight through the middle.
"The night I was placed in the psychiatric hospital," I say, "I did attack my foster father with a knife."
Luke’s face goes blank for half a second, like his brain stops to recalibrate. Then his eyes sharpen, focused, protective, but not accusing.
"And I would’ve killed him if I could have," I add. "But not for the reasons they told everyone."
He doesn’t flinch away from me. He doesn’t step back. He doesn’t ask if I’m crazy.
He just says quietly, "Okay, baby. I’m listening. Go on."
It nearly breaks me how easily he gives me that. His full trust. No judgment. No suspicion.
I close my eyes, and the room slips away—the polished calm of the present dissolving into the thick, unmoving heat of that night.
I’m back in our cramped bedroom, where the air never circulated, and the window was painted shut.
Sweat clings to my skin. I remember thinking, Why is it always so hot in here?
My hands are tacky with cheap cough syrup, the sugar drying on my fingers as I feed Maria, the youngest, who shivers beneath fever -soaked sheets that smell faintly of sweat and detergent that never quite rinsed clean.
She’s burning up. I should’ve given it to her earlier.
I should’ve checked again. Somewhere beyond the wall, our foster mother’s television laughs too loudly—bright, canned joy bleeding into a house that feels hollow and tired.
I remember hating that sound. How can anyone laugh like that?
The hallway air is stale and sour, heavy with old food and something chemical.
My bare feet know every warped board as I carry the medicine bottle and a damp cloth for Maria’s head.
It’s so late the night feels thick, pressing in.
I step around heaps of laundry and a pair of men’s boots near the back door, the leather cracked and dark with use.
He’s home, my mind registers, sharp and immediate. He’s not supposed to be.
A floorboard creaks as I reach Maria’s room—the only door left ajar, a thin blade of yellow light cutting through the dark. My heart stutters. My ears ring. Please just be sleeping, I think, already knowing it won’t be.
I push the door open.
For a split second, everything freezes: his shape blocking the light, Maria’s eyes wide and unfocused, her mouth moving without sound as she tries to disappear into the mattress.
No, my mind says, flat and absolute. Not her.
The room smells sharp and metallic, mixed with the sickly sweetness of fever.
My vision tunnels. Something in me goes cold and very, very still. This is real. This is happening.
The paring knife I used earlier sits on the cluttered nightstand, tacky with dried apple juice.
I don’t remember deciding to grab it. My hand just closes around it, locking tight enough to hurt.
Sound drains away until there’s only my breathing and Maria’s thin, broken whimper.
Get him away from her. The thought isn’t loud. It’s a command.
I don’t think. I don’t shout. I move.
He recoils with a startled cry, stumbling away from the bed.
Too slow, flashes through my head—not triumph, just urgency.
Maria curls into herself, sobbing into her pillow, her small shoulders shaking.
The sight of her—so small, so -hot—hits harder than anything else.
I’m sorry, I think, wild and useless. I’m so sorry.
I don’t stop until my foster mother crashes into the room, screaming, her nails digging into my arms as she hauls me backward.
The knife skitters across the floor. Maria’s crying fills the space where everything else disappears.
And somewhere beneath the noise, one thought settles in, heavy and unmovable: They’re never going to believe me.
Suddenly I’m yanked back into the present, heart racing, chest burning. My whole body is shaking. "It was just before my fifteenth birthday," I whisper, hearing my own voice from some faraway place. "And I don’t regret it. Not for a second. And I never will."
I start pacing again without meaning to, the story dragging motion out of me.
“They convinced the authorities I was mentally unstable,” I say.
“They used my foster record. Said I’d been bounced around.
Said I was violent. Said I was dangerous.
” My voice sharpens. “They had me locked up for a year. The staff spent every day trying to convince me I was crazy. Sometimes I felt crazy, Luke, because I was screaming the truth and no one listened.”
I force myself to look at him.
“I begged them to check the other girls. I begged them to do interviews, medical exams, anything. They ignored me.”
My stomach twists as the next memory rises.
“When my foster mother came to the hospital,” I say, “she acted like she was forgiving me. Like she was some saint.” My voice drops. “She wasn’t there to forgive anything. She was there to make sure I understood my place.”
I stop pacing. My body goes cold.
“When I asked her why she didn’t protect the girls,” I whisper, “do you know what she said?”
Luke’s eyes are blazing. “What?”
“She said, ‘Whom do you think gave him the idea? He wanted you for a long time, but I convinced him the younger ones would be easier for him to control.”
The silence that follows is thick, suffocating. Like the house itself stopped breathing.
“Maria was hurt at nine years old,” I say, voice shaking, “because his wife decided I’d be too much trouble.”
My chest tightens, but I push through. “When I turned sixteen, because I was a ward of the state, I could be released and taken out of the system. That’s when I found Bill. He helped me access my trust.”
I wipe at my face hard, like I can scrub the memory off my skin.
“After college, I built the youth center downtown,” I say. “Because I couldn’t save the girls in that house. I left them behind.” My voice breaks. “And I needed to do something good with the guilt, or it was going to swallow me.”
Luke is motionless, listening so hard it feels like he’s holding the whole story in his hands. When I look at him, every instinct in me screams to pull him close, but I don’t. I can’t.
“Anyone attached to me becomes collateral damage,” I say. “Do you understand? You. Your brother. Your sister. Your parents. Your career. Your entire life.” My throat tightens. “I can’t let that happen, Luke. That’s why we can’t get back together. That’s why I have to push you away.”
I don’t realize I’ve been pacing again until I see him.
Luke leans against the front door now as a barricade, shoulders broad, eyes dark, jaw clenched.
Not because he’s blocking me.
Because he’s already decided I’m not going to face what’s coming alone.
He doesn’t move from the door. He doesn’t rush toward me. He doesn’t try to fix anything. He just looks at me like he’s recalibrating the world around us.
“Say it again,” he says quietly.
“What?”
“That you don’t regret it.”
I swallow. “I don’t. I don’t regret it at all.”
“Good.”
There’s no outrage in his voice. No drama. Just his steadiness.
Then he crosses the room slowly and stops in front of me. Not crowding. Not cornering. Close enough that I feel the heat radiating off him.
“You were fifteen,” he says. “He was a grown man.”
I nod once.
“And if you’d killed him,” he continues, “you’d still be the victim.”
Something in my chest cracks open at that.
He pulls me into him, not crushing, not urgent. Just steady. For a long minute, neither of us speaks. His heartbeat is strong under my ear. Mine is uneven.
“I love that you want to protect me. But I’m not someone you shield from a fight. I step into them. With you. Not behind you. You don’t get to protect me from this,” he says into my hair. “You don’t get to carry it alone either. Not anymore.”
I almost argue. Almost. Instead, I let myself lean. Because I am so tired of holding myself upright.
When the knock hits the front door, it’s sharp enough to make us both tense. Luke’s head lifts first. Then mine. We don’t separate.
“Expecting someone?” he asks.
“No.”
The knock comes again, but harder this time. That’s when the door handle turns, and Luke assumes his fighting stance, his every muscle fiber ready to brawl.