22. Reth
RETH
Ian comes in without knocking. That part isn’t new. What’s new is the small diary he drops on the table next to my cold coffee like it’s evidence in a trial I’m about to lose.
For a second, I stare at it. I can’t breathe. It’s not just paper and ink. It’s her. Her voice. Her mind. The only place she ever let herself be completely raw, completely honest, and now it’s sitting here like a corpse I’m being forced to autopsy.
My fingers twitch against my thigh, wanting to snatch it, wanting to burn it, wanting to press it to my face and inhale the faint trace of vanilla and orange peel I know still clings to the pages from her hands.
I do none of those things. I just stare, chest tightening until it feels like my ribs are cracking inward.
Don’t open it. Don’t look. You don’t deserve to hear what she really thinks when you’re not there to control the narrative.
I turn away from it like it might bite me. “No.”
“Reth—”
“Whatever the fuck you’re about to do with that, no.”
“Pick it up.”
My voice flattens, the one I use when I’m done with the world. “Put it back where you found it and get the hell out.”
“I’ve been carrying the damn thing around for two days like a fucking grenade, trying to decide if I should shove it down your throat.”
“And you picked yes. Cute. Put it back.”
“You’re gonna look at it.” His control cracks right there in the middle of the room, the careful mask he’s worn for days finally shattering.
“I’ve been here every goddamn night, Reth.
Every single fucking night. I’ve pinned you down when you tried to claw through that door like a rabid animal.
I’ve taken your hits. I’ve listened to her cry until she went quiet so nobody would hear how badly you’re breaking her.
I was waiting for you to pull your head out of your ass on your own timeline.
” His voice rises, raw and furious. “But I am done, man. Done waiting for you to stop punishing her for loving you. Pick up the fucking diary.”
The words hit like a gut punch. My stomach clenches violently, a sharp, nauseating roll that makes my shoulders hunch forward before I can stop it.
My hand fists on the arm of the chair, nails digging into the wood until I feel the grain bite back.
For a second, the room tilts—her crying on the other side of the door, trying to be quiet for me.
I did that. I made her do that. The same man who once promised to protect the only pure thing he ever had is now the thing she needs protecting from.
I glare at Ian. “You had no right—”
“And you’ve got no right to waste her!” He steps closer, eyes blazing with everything he’s been swallowing.
“She’s been right outside this door every single day, sleeping on the hallway floor like a kicked dog waiting for its owner to remember it exists.
So the least you can do is pick up that diary and fucking read it. So. Pick. It. Up.”
“No.”
Something in him snaps completely.
He’s across the room in three strides, fist twisting in my shirt, pulling me off the chair and slamming my back against the wall so hard the glass rattles behind me. His forearm pins my chest like a steel bar. His face is inches from mine, breath hot, eyes burning.
“You wanna stand there and tell me you know what she can handle?” he growls through his teeth. “You wanna keep deciding for her like she’s too fucking fragile to love what’s left of you? Then you better open that goddamn diary and see what you’ve done to her.”
He steps back, breathing hard, chest heaving, and shoves the diary at me like he’s handing over a death sentence.
I take it because fighting him suddenly feels like fighting the only person who cares enough, he’d risk his life by pinning me.
I open it because some sick, starving, terrified part of me has to know how deep the damage goes.
Her handwriting hits first—Paris, the kitchen, the way she described my hands like they were something worth remembering.
The peonies. The apple cinnamon muffins I baked for her.
Takada Castle and a bench with the swans.
Pages and pages of her pouring her heart onto paper.
Each word like a blade cracking through my sternum.
Then the pages turn white.
Blank.
Blank.
Blank.
Week after week of nothing. Just clean white space where her voice used to live. Where she used to live. It presses against my chest until I can’t breathe, until the guilt tastes like copper and ash in the back of my throat.
“She stopped writing,” I mutter.
“Yeah.” Ian’s voice is quieter now, but the anger still simmers underneath.
“Right when she thought she lost you for good. But those blank pages aren’t empty, Reth.
They’re fucking screaming. She’s been carrying this alone while you sit in here drowning in your own guilt, too chickenshit to let her in.
I’ve watched her break quietly, day after day, and I’m done watching you make it worse. ”
I keep turning them. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Near the back, almost missed—one line. Undated. Ink a little shaky, like it was scratched out fast in the dark.
Monsters deserve love too. I still mean it.
I read it four times. Five. The words blur.
That Halloween night crashes back—pink lollipop, her voice in the dark saying the same impossible thing to a stranger wearing a mask. And here it is again, stubborn as hell, written like a vow even after everything I’ve done.
The crack in my chest widens into something ugly and bleeding.
She still believes it. Even now. Even after I pushed her away, after the withdrawal made me a monster in front of her, after I proved every fear she should have had.
How can you still mean it? After everything I am. After everything I did to you.
Something cracks open in my chest. A slow, ugly seam splitting wide, letting in air that burns like fire in my lungs.
Ian’s already at the door, hand on the frame, shoulders tight.
“I can’t keep carrying this for you,” he says, rough and final, the anger giving way to something heavier—disappointment, exhaustion, love that’s been stretched too thin.
“I’ve held her together while you try to find yourself.
I’ve watched you shut her out like she’s the one who put you in that cell.
Figure your shit out. Or don’t. But you need to know what it’s costing her. ”
He leaves.
I sit on the floor with that one line burning in my hands, the compass on my left hand pointing north like it’s been trying to tell me something for months.
The blank pages feel heavier than the blood I’ve spilled. Heavier than the needle marks. Heavier than Mary’s face in that cell. Heavier than the weight of pushing away the only person who ever looked at the monster and still said yes.
Monsters deserve love too.
I still mean it.
I close the diary, pulling a palm down my face.
“Reth?”
When I look up, she’s standing in the doorway, eyes red, hair a mess, every line of her beautiful face filled with a brokenness I’ve never seen on her before.
She comes in and closes the door behind her, and I look at her face, and I know immediately that something's different.
Something's happened. The specific quality of her stillness isn't the careful, patient stillness I've watched her maintain.
This is something else. This is a woman who has arrived at a conclusion.
My stomach drops.
She knows.
I can see it, and now we're here, in this room, and whatever I've been dreading since the driveway is about to arrive.
I stand, put the diary on the bed. Face her.
“How?” is all I manage to say.
“Valeria.” One word. One giant crack of destruction.
My hands curl into fists at my sides, the old, familiar violence surging so hard my vision narrows. “In town?”
She nods.
“She came near you?” The words come out low and lethal. “She fucking dared to get close to you?”
“Reth—”
“Andrei. I’m gonna kill him. I’m going to fucking—”
“Reth, stop.”
“No. Andrei was supposed to keep you safe.” I yank open the drawer, take the karambit—the first time since I got back—and rush to the door. “Motherfucker.”
“Reth, please,” she cries behind me, and I swing to face her.
"Say it," I blurt, not sure where my rage begins and the horror ends. Valeria came close to her. Too fucking close. And now she knows. "Whatever you came to say, say it so I can go downstairs and carve out my head of security’s motherfucking spine for letting that bitch near you."
A tear trickles down her cheek, and it undoes something inside me.
“This is exactly why I wanted you out. Out of my room. Out of my head. Out of my fucking life, because of this right here.” The words are like thorns coming up my throat.
“You, the only woman I’ve ever loved, and look what I did to you.
I brought this poison into your life, and I fucking hurt you,” I spit out, not because I’m angry at her.
Because I’m angry at my fucking self. “I broke us because of what I did, and I don’t want you to see me live with that. I don’t want you to live with that.”
She looks at me for a long moment, a tear trickling down her cheek.
And I wait for it, the how could you, why didn't you fight harder, you said you loved me.
I wait for the thing I've been rehearsing answers to in the dark for so long, the thing I've never been able to answer, the thing that has no answer.
“Say it, goddammit, Sophia. Say how much you hate me now that you know.”
"It's not your fault," she says, soft, slow.
Something inside me stops. The words land in the wrong order. They don't assemble into anything I recognize.
"What?"
She doesn't look away from me for even a second. "It’s not. Your fault."
Something in my chest tears open like a wound that was never given the chance to scar.
“Of course, it is. It’s my—"
"It’s not your fault." She takes one step toward me. I don't step back, which costs me. “You need to hear me say it one more time? I’ll say it.” She comes to stand right in front of me, head craned as she looks me in the eye. “It’s not. Your fault, Nazareth Hale.”