Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
MARLOWE
Iwalk fast, my feet pounding down the boardwalk in a rhythm that matches the beat of my pulse.
The air is cool and briny, kissed by the last light of sunset.
Salt, sea, and fading sun mix in the hush of twilight.
My vision tunnels ahead, toward The Wheel on the Steel Pier, its lights just flickering on.
I wish I could hate Damian. That would make this so much easier.
But I don’t. Not even a little. Not even the parts I should—the sharp edges, the silence, the bright red flags waving in my face.
I don’t hate a damn thing about him. But I hate the way he makes me feel like I’m asking for too much, when all I want is something real.
Words. Honesty. A moment where I don’t feel like I’m begging for scraps of him.
I want all of him. I want the part he keeps locked away.
It’s the worst thing. Wanting someone who won’t even meet you halfway.
God knows, I should be used to this feeling. No one has ever met me halfway.
Not my mom, who disappeared without a trace and left me with the devil in a father’s skin.
Not my father, who saw me as a paycheck more than a daughter.
Not Taylor, who literally tried to have me killed with her psycho boyfriend and still has the nerve to keep reaching out like we’re not past forgiveness.
I’ve spent my whole life trying to be enough for people who were never enough for me.
And all I want—just once—is to know what it feels like to be chosen completely.
Not for my money. Not for what I win in a card game.
Not for my body. For all of me, every fucked-up, broken piece.
Someone calls my name from somewhere behind me. Once. Then again, louder. I don’t turn around. It’s not Damian’s voice—low and rough, like asphalt and thunder. So I keep walking. They’ll take the hint.
But as I round the curve toward the entrance of the Steel Pier, I slam straight into a solid wall of warmth and muscle. My shoulder collides with a chest, and before I can stumble, strong arms reach out and catch me.
“Hey—whoa.” The voice is familiar, and it hits me a second too late that it’s his voice—the one that was calling my name a second ago. Nathan.
He steadies me, hands warm and strong on my arms as I stumble back, heart thudding. The paper bag in his hand crinkles sharply between us, the sound loud in the quiet space between our bodies.
I blink up at him, breath catching. He looks just as surprised as I feel.
“I just stopped by the bakery,” he says, smiling as he lifts the bag like proof. “Wanted to see if you were around.”
I stare at the bag. My logo’s printed on the front. The branding is on point. It looks like it belongs to someone who has their shit together.
“Thank you for your purchase,” I mumble, voice low and dry. “I appreciate your support.”
Nathan’s smile falters. He studies my face, his own expression shifting. “Hey. Oh God—what’s wrong? Are you okay?”
I try to shrug off the question, but Nathan’s eyes stay on me, soft and probing, waiting for an answer I’m not willing to give, not to him.
“Where are you heading?” he asks gently, like I’m a wounded animal he doesn’t want to startle.
“I wanted to get high,” I mutter, brushing a loose strand of hair off my face. I dart my gaze toward the Ferris wheel.
“You, high?” His gaze follows mine, toward the slow-moving spin of the Ferris wheel catching the early evening light, and his expression tells me he immediately understands.
The Wheel keeps turning, smooth and silent, like it’s never once stopped for anything—not for heartbreak, not for me. I lock my eyes back on it. I don’t know why I want to ride it. Maybe I just need something to feel like it’s lifting. Like I could float for a second. Be above it all.
“You want to go for a ride?” Nathan says, following my line of sight again. “I’ll take you.”
Before I can protest—or even make a decent excuse—we’re already walking, his hand gently guiding me by the elbow like I’m not thinking clearly, which, honestly, I’m not. Maybe a bit of company wouldn’t be so bad.
We stop at the booth, and Nathan buys two tickets without asking. It’s automatic, familiar. Too familiar. That’s when it hits me—how many times I’ve done this exact thing with him. The Ferris wheel. The small talk. The part where he thinks he knows me.
As we walk to stand in line, I glance at him, and really look. I have no idea how I ever thought he was attractive. Or fun. Or even all that kind. He’s nice, sure. Safe. Soft in the way a faded sweatshirt is soft—something that used to fit but doesn’t anymore.
He’s nothing like Damian.
Damian is loud in my blood. He’s danger and tension and a heartbeat I can never ignore. He makes me feel like I’m spinning even when I’m standing still.
He makes me feel alive.
Nathan is… muted. And I’m standing here beside him, clutching a ticket to a ride I don’t want to be on with him, wondering how I got here.
The line moves faster than I expect. Too fast. My pulse trips over itself.
What the hell am I doing?
I keep thinking it when the gate swings open and the operator waves us forward. I keep thinking it as I climb into the seat, the metal cold and unwelcoming beneath me, the air suddenly too sharp against my skin.
Nathan slides in beside me, and the bar locks into place.
I sit there stiffly, too aware of how little space there is between us. And even more aware of how badly I wish someone else were sitting here.
I just wanted to be alone. Now he’s sitting beside me, and I don’t know how to ask him to get off the ride he just paid for without sounding like a bitch.
The Wheel jerks once, then starts its slow, steady climb. Too late to back out. Too late to tell Nathan to get off and pretend this never happened. A dark, fleeting thought flickers—something Damian would probably say like, I could just push him out right here, but I stomp it down fast.
The seat sways, the cold metal humming under my hands as I grip the bar a little too tightly, like holding on to it will stop everything else in my life from spinning out of control.
We inch upward, pausing every few seconds to let more people on below.
Each stop feels like a breath caught in my throat, each lurch forward like a twist of my insides.
The higher we go, the more the noise fades. The crowd, the music, the bark of vendors—it all softens, like the world’s folding in on itself, leaving just me, the wind, and the weight pressing behind my ribs.
Nathan shifts beside me, quiet until now. Then he turns, angling his body toward mine. There’s something in his expression I haven’t seen since the first time we met—hope, maybe, or something too close to it—and it sours my stomach.
He’s ruining this. I didn’t get on this ride to talk about us or rehash what went wrong with us all those months ago. I just wanted a few minutes off the ground, alone with my thoughts and the mess I left behind with Damian, not whatever Nathan’s trying to turn this into.
“Now you’re trapped up here with me,” Nathan says, his voice dropping like he’s trying to make it flirty. “Tell me why you look like you’ve been crying.”
I cringe. It’s the way he says it, soft and rehearsed, like he’s been practicing lines in the mirror.
Like this moment is about him being smooth, not about me falling apart.
He sounds like a boy playing dress-up in a man’s voice.
And all I can think about is how Damian would never ask.
He’d just handle me. He’d dry my tears with his fingers, or lick them away with his tongue.
He’d erase the thoughts in my head with his mouth and leave no room for anything but him.
Nathan’s trying.
Damian consumes.
And I’m sitting here stuck in this stupid metal seat with the wrong man beside me, wondering if jumping off would hurt more than listening to whatever he says next.
I laugh. Sharp. Ugly. More of a broken breath than a sound.
I open my mouth to throw something snarky back, something deflective and distant and perfectly me, but the second I look at him, really look at him, it cracks.
The whole damn thing just cracks. I burst into tears.
Not the silent, pretty kind. The real kind.
The messy kind. The kind that feels like they’ve been waiting all day to claw their way out.
My shoulders shake, and I turn away, pressing my sleeve to my face like that’s going to help.
The Wheel pauses at the top. Everything slows, just enough to steal the breath from my lungs.
The ocean stretches out in front of me, dark and endless, the surface silvered by the moonlight.
The boardwalk below looks tiny, like a toy town wrapped in neon and noise I can’t quite hear anymore. From up here, it’s quiet.
“Are you crying because of me, Lo?”
Is he fucking kidding me right now?
“Last year, when we broke up, I thought I needed space. Time. I told myself I wasn’t ready to settle down. That I wanted freedom, or whatever bullshit excuse I used.”
He pauses, then looks down at his hands.
“But like I said at the bar, I made a mistake. A big one. And it took me losing you to realize it. I’m not the same person I was then. I don’t want the same things. I looked at you at the Rum and Room and I saw our future. Marriage. A family. Things I was too scared to want before.”
I wipe at my eyes again, the tears still clinging stubbornly to my lashes. I nod, and make a small sound of acknowledgment. I think I even manage a “thanks.” But I can’t focus on him—not really.
Because all I can think about is that I wish Damian was the one sitting next to me.
I wish he was the one talking. I wish Damian would look at me and tell me what the hell is going on in his head.
What he’s planning. What he’s hiding. What he’s so afraid of.
I wish he’d let me in. Trust me. Just a little.
But he doesn’t. And the truth is I barely even know him.
And yet I fucking love him so much it actually hurts.
Nathan keeps talking. Something about the Hard Rock Casino. A new job. How dealing cards there is better than the last casino. Fewer creeps. Better tips. Management that doesn’t treat him badly.
I haven’t said a word back to him. It’s the same way our relationship was, him taking up all the space, making sure the attention was always fully on him. My face is tired from holding itself together. My body’s here, buckled in, but everything else is floating somewhere just above the pier.
He keeps going. About a guy he works with. Something about switching shifts. Something about wanting to take me to dinner. I tell him that’s not going to happen. But he talks over my words, refusing to hear them.
The ride jolts as it starts its slow descent, and I can feel my stomach dip—not from the motion, but from the weight of all the things I’m pretending to hear.
I don’t want to be unkind. Nathan’s a nice person. A default setting.
But my mind’s not here.
It’s still up there, stuck in the clouds, in that quiet space where I keep hoping Damian will show up with something—anything. A scrap of honesty. A glimpse of what he hides behind that silence.
But instead I get Nathan.
When we climb out of the ride, I thank the ride operator out of habit and step off the platform like I’m moving through fog.
I walk back toward the bakery without saying much more than have a good night to Nathan, my boots thudding softly against boardwalk planks.
Nathan keeps pace beside me, still talking, still hopeful, still not acknowledging what’s real.
Then he stops walking.
And I feel it before it happens. Nathan grabs my wrist. I turn to ask him why he’s touching me. His hand finds my waist, and he leans in—slow, careful, like he’s giving me a chance to stop it.
And I do.
I put a hand on his chest, flat and firm. “Nathan,” I say quietly. “Don’t.”
He freezes, confused. His hand slightly tightens against my side. “I’m sorry,” he starts. “I thought—”
“Get your fucking hands off her.”
The words split the air like lightning.
I whip around and Damian is there. Half in shadow, half in moonlight, fists clenched at his sides, chest rising like he’s just sprinted here.
His voice is low and guttural, barely human.
The kind of sound that doesn’t come from your throat—it comes from something deeper, darker.
Something territorial and barely leashed.
Nathan’s hands go up like he’s just been caught stealing.
“Damian—” I start, stepping forward, but it’s too late.
He’s already moving.
And he’s not walking.
He’s charging.