Never Let Go
The scarf is still lying there.
Kate’s perfume clings to it, soft and floral, nothing like me, nothing like this house, nothing like the dark edges I’ve let coil around me. I press it into my face until it burns my nose, until the tears sting, until I can’t pretend anymore.
It feels like holding my old life in my hands — the version of me that laughed too loud, that thought she had plans, that believed she could want something without it destroying her. Now it’s just silk and memory and the ache of everything I’ve let slip through my fingers.
Kate. My apartment. My career. My freedom.
Pieces of myself traded away every time I said yes to him, every time I stayed when I should have run.
And God help me, I don’t regret it. That’s the worst part.
The tears don’t stop; they come harder. My chest heaves, my throat raw as I choke back sobs that taste like guilt, like longing, like everything I can’t admit out loud. I press my forehead into the scarf and whisper to the empty room, “What’s wrong with me?”
The door creaks. My body locks.
I swipe at my face too late, too messy, and then he’s there — Dean — filling the doorway like a shadow I can’t escape.
“Brooklyn.”
Just my name, low and sharp, and I swear it slices me open.
I try to hide the scarf, but his gaze pins it instantly. His eyes flick from my shaking hands to my wet cheeks, and I can’t breathe.
He stalks forward, slow, deliberate, a predator that already knows his prey has no chance. The scarf slips from my hands and flutters to the floor, a surrender I didn’t mean to give.
“What the fuck is this?” His voice is rough, dangerous.
I shake my head, whispering, “It’s nothing.” My voice cracks. “I just… I miss her. I miss who I was before—”
Before you.
The words choke in my throat.
Dean doesn’t let me finish. His hand fists in my hair, tilting my head back, forcing me to look at him. His breath sears my face, and his eyes burn like he already knows every ugly thing I’m about to confess.
“You’re crying over scraps,” he growls. “Crying over ghosts. You think you lost yourself?” His thumb smears a tear across my cheek, rough and tender all at once. “No. I took you. I own you. And you’re still fucking mine.”
The sob rips out of me, half pain, half need. “I don’t even recognise myself anymore.”
He presses his forehead to mine, voice a deadly whisper. “Good. That’s the point.”
And then his mouth is on me — not gentle, not soft, but claiming. The kiss is teeth and salt and breath stolen right out of me, his hand locking my jaw until I can’t pull away, until I’m drowning in him, in his fury, in his possession.
When he finally breaks the kiss, his words brand me deeper than any touch ever could.
“You don’t get to mourn what’s mine to erase.”
My lips are bruised, swollen, and trembling under his mouth, and I can still feel his words echoing inside me as if they carved themselves into my bones.
You don’t get to mourn what’s mine to erase.
It should shatter me. Maybe it does. The scarf is still at my feet, limp and forgotten, and for a split second I think about dropping to my knees and scooping it back up, clutching at the last piece of myself that isn’t tangled up in him.
But then his hand tightens in my hair, reminding me that there is no “before.” Not anymore.
My chest heaves against his, tears still leaking down my face. I hate how easy it is for him to wipe them away, not with tenderness, but with ownership. Like every tear proves him right.
“Dean…” My broken voice barely whispered. “I can’t… I can’t live like this. Caught between who I was and who you—”
He cuts me off with a cruel sound in his throat, dragging my head back further until the sting brings another tear sliding down.
“You think you have a choice?” His voice is molten steel. “Brooklyn, the only thing you’ve lost is the illusion that you were ever free of me.”
A sob catches in my throat. I try to shove at his chest, but it’s useless. He doesn’t even sway. His other hand catches my wrist mid-push, slamming it to the wall beside my head. I’m caged, pinned, shaking.
And God help me, my body answers him anyway. My pulse kicks so hard it feels like it’s in every vein, every nerve. My breath hitches in a way that betrays me completely.
He sees it. Of course he does.
Dean leans in closer, voice so low it’s more like a growl against my skin. “Say it. Say you still want me.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, because the truth is already on my tongue and I hate myself for it.
“I… I do,” I whisper, choking on the admission. “I still want you.”
His grip on me softens just enough to make the contrast sting worse. His forehead presses against mine again, damp with my tears. For one impossible heartbeat, it feels like he’s breaking too, like this fight isn’t just mine.
“You think you don’t belong in my world,” he whispers, voice hoarse now, fraying at the edges. “But you’re wrong. You’re the only thing that keeps me breathing in it.”
The sob that rips out of me is almost a laugh, raw and cracked. “You’ll destroy me.”
His lips graze mine again, not a kiss this time but a vow. “Then I’ll destroy every other version of you first. Until the only Brooklyn that exists is the one who’s mine.”
I want to scream at him. I want to claw my way free.
But all I do is shiver, because I believe him.
His words hang in the air like smoke, heavy, choking, filling me until I don’t know what’s mine and what’s his anymore. My wrists ache where he pinned them; my throat burns from swallowing down the scream I wanted to let out.
And then—like he hears the ragged edges of my breathing, like he feels me trembling against him—Dean’s grip eases. Just enough for blood to prickle back into my fingers. Just enough that I see the shift in his eyes, the fracture no one else would ever notice.
“I don’t…” His jaw flexes, a sound caught between a curse and a confession grinding past his teeth. His forehead drops against mine again, the pressure not cruel now, just desperate. “I don’t want to be like this with you.”
The words hit me harder than any demand. My tears blur him, his features dissolving into shadow and heat, but I can feel the way his chest heaves against me. I can feel the fight in him too, same as mine, only his is older, sharper, like it’s carved into his very skin.
“I don’t know how to be anything else,” he admits, the whisper rough and almost broken.
His hand lifts, threading into my hair but with care this time, not control, brushing damp strands back from my cheeks as if the motion itself might undo the damage he’s already done.
“This is all I know, Brooklyn. Taking. Owning. Holding so tight, I break it. And I can’t—” He stops, swallows hard, shakes his head like he’s furious at himself for even saying it.
For a second, I don’t breathe. My skin is crawling, my face wet, and his eyes make my chest hurt.
“You scare me,” I whisper, my voice shredded raw. “Not because you hurt me, Dean. Because I don’t know how to stop needing you when you do.”
He closes his eyes, something vicious twisting across his face like the truth burns him worse than it does me. His thumb strokes my tear-stained cheek, clumsy, almost tender. “I never wanted you broken, Brooklyn,” he says. “But I’ll never be gentle enough to give you back whole either.”
The silence between us is wreckage, hot and ragged and messy. His breath ghosts against my mouth like he’s starving, like he’s two seconds from shoving me back against the wall again—but instead, he just holds me tighter, like maybe restraint is the most violent thing he can give me.
His hand doesn’t leave my face. It lingers, thumb brushing over the curve of my jaw like he’s memorising it, like he’s terrified I’ll vanish if he doesn’t keep touching me.
Then, slowly, he steps back—not enough to let me go, but enough to drag me with him, his fingers curling around mine so I can’t mistake it for mercy.
“Come here,” he mutters, voice low, ragged. Not a command this time. Not really. It’s softer, but it still leaves no room for me to refuse.
He leads me out of the kitchen, down the hall where the shadows are deeper, until we’re in the living room.
The city bleeds through the glass wall in shades of black and silver, neon streaking the skyline, but his attention never wavers from me.
He pulls me down onto the couch with him, the leather groaning beneath us, and before I can blink, I’m folded against his chest, his arms caging me in.
My cheek presses against the rough cotton of his shirt. His heartbeat pounds beneath it, too fast, too heavy, as though he’s holding something back by sheer force of will. One hand grips my hip like a shackle; the other tangled in my hair, not pulling—just anchoring.
For the first time since I met him, the silence feels almost… safe.
Almost.
“You don’t get it,” he finally says, the words vibrating against my ear.
His voice is low, uneven. “I’ve bled for men who wanted me gone.
I’ve burned for things no one should ever crawl back from.
Every time I think I’ve clawed free, it drags me down again.
This world—it doesn’t let you choose what kind of man you are. ”
His breath stutters, his grip tightening on my hip until I gasp. He loosens it instantly, curses under his breath, then presses his mouth to my temple like he’s begging me not to move away.
“I don’t know how to be good,” he admits, quieter now. “But I know how to keep you. And I’ll do that, Brooklyn. Even if it kills every piece of me that remembers what good feels like.”
Something inside me cracks at that—not from fear, but from the brutal honesty of it. He’s not pretending to be a saviour. He’s not promising redemption. He’s telling me the truth, jagged and unvarnished, and it cuts deeper than any of his commands ever could.
“I don’t want good,” I whisper back, surprising myself. My throat tightens, but I force the words through anyway. “I just want you to stop making me feel like I have to run to survive you.”
His chest heaves beneath me. For a heartbeat, I think he’ll laugh, or snarl, or drag me under again. But instead he just exhales, long and harsh, his lips grazing my hairline.
“You survive me by staying,” he says. “That’s the only way.”
And the way he says it—like a vow, like a sentence—makes me shiver, because for the first time, I don’t know which one it is.