CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD
· · ·
I don’t know how long I was out.
Could have been twenty minutes.
Could have been three years.
Honestly both feel accurate.
· · ·
The pills have done their thing.
Everything is soft and slightly sideways.
Colors are a little too saturated.
My own hands look interesting.
· · ·
My dad.
Right.
I need to get up.
I issue this instruction to my body.
My body considers it.
Takes its time.
Eventually agrees.
· · ·
I drag myself upstairs.
One hand on the wall.
Not because I need it.
Just because the wall is there and it seems friendly and I don’t wanna be rude.
· · ·
My dad is in the movie room.
The room my mom designed.
The projector she picked out.
The blanket she bought because she said the other one wasn’t soft enough.
· · ·
He’s on the couch.
A bottle of scotch on the table in front of him.
More gone than not.
He’s asleep.
Or something close to it.
The kind of sleep that arrives because the body runs out of ways to stay awake and feel things.
I know that kind.
We have a lot in common tonight, my dad and I.
I stand in the doorway for a second.
He looks so small.
My dad has never looked small.
In all my years he has been the largest presence in any room — not physically, just in the way he fills space, takes up air, makes everything better just by being in it.
· · ·
He just looks like a regular person now.
A person who has lost the thing he loved most.
I cover him with the blanket.
Her blanket.
The soft one.
· · ·
I press a kiss to his head and stand there for a second with my hand on his hair the way he’s done for me a thousand times.
The roles reversed.
My dad tucked in.
Me standing watch.
· · ·
Neither of us are okay.
But only one of us can fall apart tonight.
I go find the Tylenol.
Leave it with a glass of water on the coffee table.
A small, stupid, useless gesture.
The only thing I can do right now.
He stirs.
Just barely.
His eyes crack open and find me in the dark and he makes a sound that isn’t a word but means everything — relief and grief and love all compressed into one broken exhale — and then he reaches for me.
Both arms.
All the way.
I sit on the edge of the couch and let him pull me in and he holds on in a way he hasn’t since I was very small.
Since I was the one who needed holding.
His whole body shaking.
Trying not to.
Not quite managing.
· · ·
The man who has smiled through everything.
Every scraped knee and panic attack and slammed door.
Every hard thing I ever brought home.
He smiled through all of it.
Made it smaller.
Made it survivable.
· · ·
He can’t smile through this.
“I’ve got you,” I say into his hair.
My mom’s words.
Her exact words.
He cries harder.
We stay like that for a long time.
Long enough that my back starts to ache and the pills start to wear thin at the edges and the grief underneath begins to make itself known again — excuse me, I’m still here, remember me —
Eventually he goes still.
Breathing deep.
Back under.
· · ·
I get him to bed.
Slowly, carefully.
Tuck him in properly.
Leave the Tylenol on the nightstand where he’ll be able to reach it.
I stand in the doorway of the room he shared with my mom for twenty-two years.
Her pillow.
Her nightstand.
Her book, still open to the page she was on.
Still open.
Like she just got up for a glass of water.
Like she’s coming right back.
I close the door quietly.
· · ·
And walk back to my room.
The pill bottle is on my desk where I left it.
I sit on the floor next to my bed — the bed feels like too much of a commitment right now — and stare at it.
I’m doing the math.
It’s not the first time tonight I’ve done the math.
How much I have.
How much would be enough to just — turn the volume all the way down.
Just for a while.
· · ·
I’m definitely still a little high.
That’s the only reason I’m being this honest with myself.
I reach for the bottle.
Tap tap.
I go completely still.
The bottle is in my hand.
My window is across the room.
And I wonder if I took much and now I’m hallucinating.
Tap tap.
· · ·
I put the bottle down.
On the floor.
Carefully.
“Sorry, bottle.”
A little louder now.
Tap. Tap.
And something in my chest that has been locked up tight for two years just —
cracks open.
Relief.
Humiliating, total, complete relief.
The kind that makes your eyes sting before you’ve even moved.
I don’t have to do this alone.
I don’t remember crossing the room.
Everything is still soft and sideways.
But I’m at the window.
And then he’s there.
· · ·
Cassian Vale.
Two years older.
Standing in the dark outside my window like he has a thousand times.
Like he never left.
Like no time has passed at all.
He comes through before I can say anything.
Doesn’t wait to be invited.
He never does.
And then he sees me.
He puts me on the bed.
Lies down beside me.
Doesn’t explain. Doesn’t ask.
Just — here.
· · ·
The way I was for him. When we were eleven. When the sirens were outside and everything had gone wrong and he came through my window and I didn’t say a word.
Just stayed. He learned it here. In this room. And now he’s giving it back.
· · ·
“Are you real?“ I say.
I reach up and trace my fingers along his jaw. He has stubble now. This is new. I file this away for later.
He doesn’t answer. Just pulls me in by the back of my head, my face against his chest, and I can feel his heartbeat under my cheek. Steady. Real.
So I let go.
I cry the way you cry when you’ve been holding it for too long.
Not gracefully. Not quietly. The shaking kind, the gasping kind, his shirt in my fists, the whole weight of the day and the last two years and my mom’s yellow cardigan on the hook by the door and the good and the granola all coming out at once.
I cry for every moment I was somewhere else when she was right here.
· · ·
He holds me through all of it.
His hand moving slowly through my hair. Steady.
Present. This is his language too — not words but this.
The staying. The weight of him beside me. The way he doesn’t try to make it smaller or stop it or fix it.
Just: here. I’m here. I’ve got you.
And I realize he’s crying too.
I pull back far enough to see his face.
His eyes are red. His jaw is set but something underneath it has given way. He’s not hiding it. He’s just — letting me see.
· · ·
She was his too.
My mom. The only real mother he ever had. And she’s gone and he came here and he is crying and I feel something so big and so tender I don’t have a word for it.
We look at each other.
Both completely undone.
I suddenly notice how genuinely incredible Cassian looks.
Broader. Jaw sharper. Slightly older.
And then I laugh.
I don’t know why. The pills probably. Or the absurdity of everything. Or the way he looks — this person I’ve loved my entire life, red-eyed and real and right here — and I laugh once, short and involuntary, and he blinks.
One eyebrow up.
“Sorry,” I manage. “I’m—” I wave vaguely at the room. At myself. “The pills.”
As if that explains anything.
I forgot he stopped existing here after the hospital and the pills.
He stares at me.
And then he kisses me.
I don’t see it coming.
I don’t have time to decide what to do with it.
I just sit there for two full seconds while Cassian Vale kisses me on the worst night of my life and then every single rational thought I have ever had leaves my body and I kiss him back.
With everything.
Every broken piece of me.
Two years of grey and empty and pill bottles and waiting and the window I kept open like an idiot.
Two years of almost.
All of it.
· · ·
He makes a sound against my mouth. Surprised. Like he wasn’t prepared for all of that.
Good.
I feel relieved he's here.
I feel angry it took him this long.
I feel devastated from today.
But underneath all of it—happy.
Which is the most depressing thing I've ever felt.
That happy is still in there.
That he can reach it in me even on the worst day of my life.
That I am still this hopeless, ruined, completely open person when it comes to Cassian.
· · ·
His hands find my face first — both of them, cupping my jaw, tilting me up toward him — and he kisses me deeper this time. His tongue explores every part of my mouth, like he’s been craving this moment for years.
He kisses down my jaw, my throat.
Finding the places that make me lose my train of thought completely.
I can feel his stubble against my skin, the hard length of him pressing against me.
“Is this okay?” He murmurs against my lips, his breath hot on my skin.
“Yes,” I say, breathless. “Yes, please don’t stop. Yes to everything. All of it. Whatever you're about to do—yes."
He laughs against my neck. Low and warm and husky.
His hands move down my throat, my shoulders, sliding under the hem of my shirt and pulling it over my head in one slow, deliberate motion.
He sits back and looks at me, his eyes taking in every inch of my exposed skin, lingering on my chest, his gaze like a physical touch—every part of me he looks at shivering in anticipation.
“Fuck,” he breathes, his voice low and husky.
“Don’t stop,” I repeat, my voice barely a whisper.
He doesn’t stop.
His mouth finds my collarbone, moving down with intention, warm and wet, learning every place that makes me gasp.
I pull at his shirt and he yanks it over his head, and I put my hands on him, all over him, because I have been waiting and I am done waiting.
He’s hard everywhere.
He presses against me, solid and insistent.
“Cassian —"
“I know,” he says, low and certain. “I’ve got you.”
· · ·
He takes me apart slowly.
His hands and his mouth explore every inch of me, lingering at my waistband, learning me the way you learn something you intend to keep.
He unbuttons my jeans, slides his hand inside, gripping me firmly.
The way he says my name when something feels too good — Ro , broken and low, nothing like the controlled version of himself he shows the rest of the world.
This Cassian has no barriers. I did that. I am so pleased with myself.
“I want everything, Ro. I want —” He starts.
“Yes,” I say. Before he finishes.
“I haven’t said —"
“I know what you’re asking and yes.”
I get my hands on his belt. He helps.
All barriers between us—just gone.
He’s careful. So careful. As he lowers himself down on top of me.
Claiming me.
Like I’m something worth being careful with — and that alone, that specific tenderness, undoes me more than anything else.
Like he knows how long I’ve been broken and doesn’t want to add to it anymore.
“Okay?” he breathes.
“Yes,” I say. “Please.”
· · ·
He pushes forward slowly, then sliding beneath to press against my entrance—deliberate, inch by inch. Watching my face the whole time. His forehead drops to mine.
Both of us go still.
I stop breathing.
“Holy shit,” I whisper.
“Yeah,” he breathes. Like he feels it too. Like this was always going to be exactly this.
· · ·
He starts to move.
And I stop being a person with words.
Just this. Just sensation.
Just him — his hands gripping my hips, his mouth at my throat, my name on his lips over and over like a rhythm he can’t stop, like he’s been holding it in for years and has finally run out of reasons.
He's slow at first, gripping my hips like he needs something to hold onto.
Deep.
“Say you’re still mine,” he breathes. “Ro. Say it.”
Something in me hears that and breaks opens even more. I wrap around him completely. Pull him even closer—deeper still.
“I’m still yours,” I say, the words tearing out of me. “I’ve always been yours. Not for a single day did I stop.”
Something also loosens in him.
His grip tightens. He moves harder, faster, hitting the spot inside me that makes me see stars.
Like the words knocked the last thing loose. Like saying it out loud after everything is the key he’s been looking for.
“I’ve got you,” he says against my skin. Low and rough and shaking slightly. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
· · ·
Like a promise. Like an apology. Like the thing he couldn’t say with words since we were kids finally finding the only language he has.
It feels like blue daisies.
Like his hand finding mine under the stars when we were eight.
Like every rooftop and every locked door and every morning I woke up alone. Like coming home to something I didn’t know was mine until I had it.
· · ·
“I love you,“ I say.
I don’t mean to. It just comes out. After too many years of keeping it in.
He goes still for one suspended second.
Then he kisses me. Hard and certain and nothing held back. Like the words broke the last door open.
And we fall apart together.
· · ·
His name in my mouth. Mine on his.
Both of us finally, completely, here.
After, we don't move.
I don't know where he ends and I start—just a tangle of limbs.
He pulls me in. Wraps around me from behind. His arm heavy against my chest. His face against the back of my head. His heartbeat steady against my spine.
Two years.
Gone.
Like they never even happened.
I stare at the dark ceiling.
His breathing evening out behind me.
And then I remember my mom.
The guilt is total and instant.
Like cold water—sobering me up.
That I could be happy on this night.
While my dad is in a bed that's half empty.
While the cardigan is still on a hook by the door.
I should only feel grief.
I hope she would understand.
I press my hand over his and let myself have it.
Just for tonight.