Chapter Twenty-Seven
Skylar
The pasta goes cold.
I cooked for him. I don’t know why.
Maybe I thought it would matter.
Perhaps I just wanted to do one soft thing in a world that doesn’t let me be soft.
So I stirred the sauce until it clung to the wooden spoon, boiled the spaghetti until the steam filled the apartment, checked it twice to make sure it didn’t turn to mush.
I even plated it. Two servings. Forks crossed on chipped plates.
I even lit the tea light candle I found under the sink last week. Dust still on the bottom. Set it in the middle of the table.
Stupid. I know.
But I did it anyway.
Then I waited.
And waited.
The clock ticked loud in the quiet.
Six.
Then seven.
By nine, the candle had burned out. The pasta was stiff, the sauce congealed, and my throat was too tight to swallow any of it down.
No messages. No calls.
Not that I expected one. Zane doesn’t explain himself. He doesn’t check in with me.
But tonight… nothing.
Finally, I scrape the plates into the bin, sauce sliding off in thick, cold clumps.
I wash everything as if it were personally offending me.
Too much soap, scrubbing so hard I nearly strip the non-stick off the damn pan.
The sponge tears. Doesn’t matter. My skin turns red.
The kitchen smells of garlic and regret, and still I scrub, chasing some fucked-up sense of control in suds and steel.
I don’t cry.
Fuck him.
I won’t give it that power. I’ve cried for people who let me down, and Zane won’t be one of them.
I turn off the tap.
My palms sting, the heat from the water still trapped in my skin. I glance down at what I’m wearing—a short skirt, a tank top, lip gloss I applied for no goddamn reason other than I thought he’d be here.
The apartment’s quiet, but not in a good way. It’s that heavy silence that wraps around your chest and squeezes until you can’t tell if it’s hurt or shame.
Every shadow appears darker. Every creak of the floor is a sound I want to be him.
My heart jumps at the slightest noise.
A car passing.
The wind at the window.
The fridge humming to life.
But the door never opens.
I go to bed.
The sheets are cold when I crawl under them. The mattress feels too big without him. My legs tangle in the mess of blankets that still smell of him. I detest loving that scent so much.
I roll onto my side, fists tucked under my ribs, arms tight around myself as if the pressure can fix the ache. But it doesn’t. It never has.
I stare at the wall and try to focus on anything but the emptiness beside me. But my mind drifts before I can stop it.
I try not to think about where he is.
But I do.
My head spins through the worst-case scenarios, every one darker than the last.
All the versions of Zane I’ve met.
The one with blood on his knuckles and no explanation.
The one who kisses me as if I’m the only thing keeping him alive.
The one built from scars and ash and all the shit he carries from a life that taught him not to trust softness.
The one I love.
I think about the promises I never asked him to make. The ones I wanted but never said out loud. The ones I know better than to hope for.
He could be out there right now doing something reckless. Something that ends with him curled up on the cold pavement, bleeding under a streetlight while I lie here, alone, in a bed where he’s supposed to be.
I close my eyes, and pray for sleep to take me. But all I can feel is the space where he should be and the ache in my chest that won’t shut the fuck up.
Finally, I hear the front door open.
It’s so fucking late the numbers on the clock don’t matter anymore.
I don’t move.
Not because I’m asleep. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking I waited up, or that I sat at the chipped table like an idiot, hoping he’d walk through the door in time for dinner.
He moves through the dark without turning on a light.
Then the bathroom door clicks shut.
Water sputters from the pipes, the wheezing stream that always takes a minute to heat. The shower rattles through the wall behind my head.
I stare at the ceiling. Even so, my mind wanders.
Shower.
The thought creeps in before I can stop it. Something bitter and bruised and ugly.
Maybe he fucked someone else tonight.
This may be the reason for his showering. Scrubbing away perfume, sweat and her fucking hands off his skin before he slides in next to me like nothing happened.
That’s the version of Zane from before we became whatever the fuck this is. The Zane who burned through girls the way he burned through cigarettes, always needing the next hit. But I know he has not touched anyone in months.
Still, that thought burrows in.
Rotten and sharp. It coils low in my gut, heavy with the kind of jealousy that doesn’t have teeth but still tears you up from the inside. I push it down, shove it into the dark corner of my brain where all the other ugly things live.
The water stops. The pipes give one last groan, echoing through the wall like they’re exhausted too.
Then silence. It stretches out until my skin prickles.
The door creaks open a minute later. I keep my back to him, face buried in the pillow, pretending to be asleep—something I haven’t managed for hours.
The bed dips behind me. Sheets lift, and then he’s there.
His chest presses against my back, all heat and muscle, his skin still damp from the shower. His arm snakes around my waist, fingers splaying wide over my stomach. He pulls me into him until my body curves into his on instinct.
His cock is hard against my ass, and it shouldn’t do a damn thing to me. I’m too pissed for this, but I’m already coming undone.
His face tucks into the crook of my neck, breath grazing over my skin in warm, steady puffs. He doesn’t kiss me. Doesn’t whisper my name. Just breathes like I’m his anchor and he’s been drowning all night.
But I’m the one trying not to fall apart.
I want to roll over, shove him back, ask him where the fuck he was, who he’s fucked, and why he thinks he can walk in and press himself against me like this is still okay.
But then his thumb drags slowly across my hip, dragging heat in its wake. I fucking melt. All my tension is leaking into the sheets beneath me.
I hate how good it feels.
I hate that even now, after everything, his touch breaks me open. He still has the power to make me safe and wrecked at the same time.
He holds me tighter, arm banded around my waist. Just him, solid and steady.
Somewhere in that warmth, I let it go. A state of uncertainty. The fury. The fucking ache in my chest. I let it slip, piece by piece, off my skin and into the dark where it can’t hurt me anymore.
I close my eyes and fall asleep in his arms.
The smell hits before anything else. Strong enough to claw me up out of whatever restless sleep I’d fallen into. It curls in the air, punching straight through the dull ache in my chest that hasn’t eased since last night.
Coffee.
I blink, the light through the curtains is soft and warm. Morning’s wrapped in quiet, that early stillness before the noise creeps in.
I can already tell the bed’s empty. The sheets are pushed back, body heat fading fast. My fingers find the spot where he was. It’s not cold yet.
I sit up slowly, every part of me aching with questions I shouldn’t still have. Hair falls over my face, which I move away and gaze up, and there he is.
Zane, standing by the kitchen counter.
Shirtless.
Just a pair of low-slung boxers hanging off his hips, the waistband riding too low, toeing the line of indecent without giving a single fuck. His back’s to me. He’s moving like he doesn’t know I’m watching, shoulders flexing, every muscle carved and tight, veins running down his arms.
But it’s not the way he moves that knots my stomach.
It’s the bruises.
Purple and blue and fucking brutal.
One rides high on his ribs, another lower down, near his spine. His knuckles are red and look split. Dried blood crusted along one. There’s a mark on his shoulder blade, red and angry. One that landed with intention.
He shifts slightly, reaches for a mug, and I see more.
And still he’s just standing there. Making coffee. Completely calm.
My mouth goes dry. I swallow the lump that’s rising.
Part of me wants to crawl out of bed and run my hands over every one of those marks, count them, kiss them, curse whoever left them. The other part wants to scream at him until my voice breaks.
I stare, breath snagged halfway in my throat, chest tight around it.
He reaches past the kettle to grab a second mug, and that’s when I see the rest of him.
The bruises across his front make the ones on his back look like nothing.
A mess of deep purples and sickly yellows blooming across his ribs. There’s a cut under one pec. The skin around it’s inflamed, the kind of swelling that fucking hurts to move.
And then there’s the outline of his cock beneath the worn cotton of his boxers. Hanging to the left, thick, even though he’s soft. He’s not hard, not even close. But fuck, I feel the heat crawl up my spine, anyway.
I swallow hard, and my mouth suddenly dries.
Zane doesn’t know I’m awake. His jaw tenses like it always does when he’s trying to hold something in.
“Zane?”
My voice cracks. I clear my throat and repeat it, louder this time, trying to steady it.
He glances over his shoulder, casual as fuck, as if I haven’t just woken up to a battlefield mapped across his body. He grabs the mug from the counter and walks toward the bed.
“Morning,” he says, too fucking casual. Handing me a coffee, as if he didn’t come back torn apart.
I wrap my fingers around the mug, more to keep my hands from shaking than anything else.
“What happened?”
He shrugs, and the motion makes him wince, before he covers it with another bullshit line.
“Got into it with some guy. It wasn’t a big deal.”
The fuck it wasn’t.
I narrow my eyes, searching his face for something. A twitch. A crack. Anything that proves this is hitting deeper than he’s letting on.
“You got jumped?”
“Sort of. Doesn’t really matter.”
“Zane—”
He cuts me off with a stare. Cold. Exhausted. A silent warning to drop it. His silence feels sharper than any words, as if saying it out loud would make it too fucking real.
“I handled it.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He takes a long sip of coffee. Eyes forward. Mouth shut.
And I sit there, heart breaking, because he’s right here and I still can’t fucking reach him.
I sip mine too, the mug heavy in my hands. My eyes stay on him, watching over the rim, watching every goddamn detail. The stiffness in his shoulders. The way he avoids looking at me.
There’s something he’s not telling me.
“Did you go looking for it?” I ask, voice low, almost afraid of the answer. “For the fight?”
He smirks. It’s not amusement. It’s defense. Deflection. A mask.
“Is that what you think of me?”
“I don’t know what to fucking think, Zane.” My heart thuds hard enough that I can feel it in my throat. “You disappear all night. You won’t tell me where you were, and now you look like someone used you as a fucking punching bag.”
His gaze lifts, finally meeting mine. There’s no warmth in it. Just something hard, a wall I can’t climb, no matter how hard I try.
“I said I handled it,” he mutters, sharper now.
I set the mug down on the old stool beside the bed. My hands are shaking, fingers curling into fists against the blankets.
“I’m not stupid.”
The words hang in the air, heavier than they should be.
I lean back against the headboard, pull my knees up, and wrap my arms around them. My chest is too tight.
“If you want to shut me out, fine. Do that. But don’t stand there and feed me bullshit.”
His jaw ticks. A muscle jumps near his temple.
“I’m not lying.”
“You’re not telling me the truth either.” I scoff under my breath.
His eyes stay on the floor, on a crack in the wood that doesn’t matter. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t even blink.
And that’s what fucking kills me.
“Are you in trouble?” I ask, voice quieter than I mean it to be. My heart is thudding with something I don’t want to name.
He finally looks up. Just for a second. “No.”
But it’s not the kind of no that settles anything.
“But you can’t tell me where you were?”
He drags in a breath through his nose, eyes already gone cold again. He doesn’t even try to lie.
Instead, he turns. Walks back to the sink and drops his mug in it. That’s the end of the fucking conversation, apparently.
I sit there frozen, knees tucked under my chin, arms still wrapped tight around myself like that’ll hold me together.
He pulls on his jeans, shirt, and boots by the door. Every move is silent. He walks to the door, opens it without a word, and leaves.
The door shuts behind him with a soft click.
I stare at the spot he just left. There’s a weight pressing down on my chest, crawling beneath my ribs, settling in.
Something’s happening—something I’m not allowed to know about.
He’s slipping through my fingers, inch by inch, and I don’t know how to stop it without breaking us or myself.
But I can feel it coming—one crack at a time.