Chapter 32
His forehead is warm against mine. The rhythm of his breath feels like a prayer, and for one blissful second, the world narrows to the space between us, the mattress beneath me, the hum of the city outside, the cedarwood ghost of him that lingers under my skin like a bruise.
His confessions hang between us, heavy and still, nowhere near enough. Because while his words sound pretty, they’re a double-edged sword. One that tears open old wounds and, in the same breath, tries to patch them over with promises laced in thorns that slice my palms every time I reach for them.
My first, stupid impulse is to believe him when he says he’ll bulldoze everyone and everything in our path.
My second is to spit in his face, to make him feel a fraction of what I’ve been living with.
Because promises are cheap in our world.
I learned that the hard way, and I refuse to ever be made a fool of again.
These men think their names, their connections, their so-called power mean that a few pretty speeches or extravagant gifts are enough to fix everything.
Few of them actually know the agony of bleeding for what they claim means the world to them.
And they sure as hell don’t know what it feels like to be exiled without so much as a second thought.
I have bled. I’ve lived through the toxic mix of embarrassment and pain of being cut off in the blink of an eye.
I learned that pity is poisonous, and apologies are like paper; they catch flame the moment the wind hits them.
I learned the weight of silence. I learned how lonely, how quiet, the after is.
And if Matt wants to even attempt to make things right, then he needs to understand the hell his actions put me through.
He says he was afraid of what would happen if he spoke.
That he didn’t know what to believe, so he hesitated.
The reasoning settles in my bones like cold iron—too solid, too easy to believe.
Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s a lie polished to sound like truth, meant to dull the shame of his silence.
Either way, it hurts that part of me still wants to believe him.
I stare at him—this boy who once wrecked me with a kiss and then destroyed me with his silence. This man who stood by while I bled behind closed doors, wrapped in lace and lies, watching every moment of it, and still did nothing.
And now he wants redemption? Now he wants me?
It’s not that easy. I need proof—real, tangible proof that I can hold between my hands.
Not words. Not gifts. I want to see him crawl through the wreckage he helped build.
I want bloody knees, scraped palms, and worship.
I need him to understand that forgiveness isn’t something he can buy; it’s something he’ll have to bleed for and be willing to pay the price, no matter how high the cost.
I want to watch him dismantle himself, then, piece by trembling piece, rebuild around me, like gravity itself bends for us. I’ve worshiped him long enough. Now it’s his turn to kneel, to raise me higher, and maybe—if he begs right—I’ll let him climb up beside me.
A part of me still hungers for revenge—raw, slow, and merciless, a taste that lingers.
Let the world watch him come apart; let him prove to them what I’ve always known—he’s a beautiful disaster, and a walking red flag.
But for better or worse, he’s mine and revenge without reverence is just cruelty.
If he wants back what he ripped from me—my trust, my home, my heart—he needs to kneel and worship every shard he hopes to reclaim because I need him to prove I’m not collateral, not just another pawn in their games in his eyes.
I’m not the girl they labelled a traitor because her mother betrayed them.
I am currency. I am power. I am a thing of value and he will not spend me without counting every penny.
I need him to show me he means every beautiful lie, every pretty word he’s ever whispered. And God, I need to feel like I’m more than a dirty little secret. I want to be worshiped in the daylight, in full view, untouchable.
I finally know my worth, and accepting anything less simply isn’t enough anymore.
“I want to see you break for me,” I say, the words coming out harsher than I intended.
I guess that’s what happens when you stop biting your tongue and start speaking your truth.
“If there’s any hope for us, I need you to know how it feels to be small, smaller than I ever thought possible.
I want you to feel that fall the way I felt it, so maybe you’ll stop stepping on me. ”
His brows knit, confusion flashing in those emerald eyes I used to get lost in. Eyes that still haunt my every waking thought and most of my nightmares, too.
“You don’t get to beg with words, Matthew,” I say, cupping his jaw, feeling the scratch of his scruff against my hand. “You don’t get to show up with poetry in your mouth and think it fixes everything.”
His throat works. “I know.”
“Do you?” The laugh that comes out of me is a small, jagged thing.
“You say you’ll crawl,” I continue, voice quiet but still sharp as glass, “but what happens when the crawling gets hard? When it’s not dramatic or romantic? Just slow, excruciating, and humiliating with no end in sight.”
The corner of his mouth twitches, like he wants to make a joke to ease the tension, and I hate that old reflex—the half-smile he used to hide behind.
I always did. My hand twitches with the urge to slap it away.
But then he swallows, and the facade drops, leaving the broken boy beneath—the line etched across his forehead, the slump in his shoulders.
“I’ll keep crawling. Until I’m exactly where you need me to be,” he vows.
My pulse stutters. The stupid part of me—the still-broken girl who used to count how many times he blinked in a conversation just to feel closer to him—wants to fall into his arms again.
Wants to kiss the apology off his lips and pretend it never happened.
But I can’t. I won’t.
Not after what he did.
Not after what he didn’t do.
God, it hurts to be near him. It hurts more than his absence and the gaping void he left behind.
“You’ll crawl, you’ll beg. You’ll show me, with actions, not words, just how much you missed me.
You’ll make it so everyone who turned their backs on me will have to look me in the face and believe me because you made them.
” I list my demands like a challenge, wanting to see if he means what he says or if he’ll balk at me insisting he follow through.
If he thought I wouldn’t test him, then he clearly knows fuck all about me.
“What if—”
“There is no what if,” I cut him off, dropping my hand from his face as I stand, putting distance between us.
“Either you do it, Matt, or I walk. That’s it.”
My voice stays steady, even as my chest burns. “Nice gestures and pretty speeches don’t mean a thing anymore. You’re a year too late for half-measures, and if there’s any hope left at all, it won’t survive you doing this halfway.”
He studies me as though I’m a riddle and, for a second, I wonder if I’ve pushed him too far.
And then determination slams down behind his eyes, his spine straightens even as he dips his chin, and he slowly unfolds to his feet.
For a single heartbeat, I’m positive this is it.
He’s going to stride out of this hotel room and my life for good, and I’m helpless to do anything other than brace myself for the heartbreak coming my way.
“I told you I won’t ask for forgiveness,” he says quietly.
His fingers tug at his suit jacket before he lets it slide from his shoulders and unholsters his gun, setting that down too.
He undoes his cuffs, rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt until the tattooed lily on his arm stares back at me—an old ache, a reminder of the boy who loved me so fiercely he got the flower I’m named after etched into his skin.
“I know I don’t deserve it,” he continues, voice steady but wrecked. “But I’m asking for a chance. A real one. To prove I still know how to love you. How to choose you. How to treasure what I almost destroyed.”
For a moment, I forget how to breathe. The sound of his jacket hitting the floor is too loud, too final, like something breaking loose between us. He stands there, unarmed, and it shouldn’t matter, but it does.
His words hang in the air, soft and blasphemous. Love you. Choose you. Treasure you. Three phrases I’ve dreamt of and dreaded in equal measure. They sound like prayers from a man who’s only just remembered how to kneel.
My pulse betrays me first. Then my anger.
Both flare and twist until I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
I want to scoff, to throw every cruel truth I’ve been forced to swallow back in his face.
But instead, I just stare at the man who once burned down everything I was, standing there like he’s willing to burn for me now.
And that’s the problem, isn’t it? He’s always known how to set fires, but he's never learned how to stay and watch them burn. No one ever taught him.
In a single, slow, deliberate movement, he lowers himself to his knees, inches from his jacket. The soft thud of his knees hitting the floor is like surrender, a dull thud that rattles through me. His palms rest heavily on his thick thighs, fingers flexing once before he bows his head.
The hotel room hums with the weight of it—the soft collapse of him under me, no hesitation, no fight.
Watching him offer his surrender so effortlessly, without any kind of hesitation or second guessing has a tendril of hope unfurling deep inside my chest. We just might have a shot in hell after all.