Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Barret
There’s a thing about life I’ve never understood.
Maybe no one does. It’s built with fleeting moments of light stacked against a tower of fucked-up times.
Just enough good to convince you that things can get better—that maybe survival is possible.
Until the rhythm changes. Until the song you thought you knew morphs into something alien.
One wrong note, and suddenly you’re standing in the middle of a genre you’ve never played before.
It feels like a brick hurled into glass. Like fire reigniting in a room you’ve just finished dousing.
Optimists, therapists, people with degrees—hell, anyone who wants to believe in resilience—call it growth. They dress it up as a chance to adapt, to reinvent yourself.
Grow into what, exactly? Being stronger? Wiser? Happier? No. That’s a fucking lie. Life doesn’t sculpt you into some noble warrior. It grinds you down into brittle, scarred versions of the person you might’ve been if the world had just left you the fuck alone.
Exhibit A: me.
It doesn’t build character. It’s demolition. And I’m the fool still standing in the rubble, pretending there’s something left worth salvaging. Except I can’t even name what that something is. It sure as hell isn’t me.
The day Arlo Wilder was born—Kit and Roderick Wilder’s son—I thought maybe, just maybe, things would be settling down. A baby shifts everything, doesn’t it?
New life.
New joy.
New fucking hope—maybe even a reason to believe in miracles.
A reset button we didn’t know we wanted, but felt just right. For one fragile second, I wanted to believe it. The Wilder family, the band—maybe this was the breath after so many fucking years drowning in whatever life had thrown at us.
That was also the day Eddie told me he’d finally found Cleo.
She had a fiancé. Dorian Thoreau. New York socialite on the surface. Parasite beneath it. Pedophile. Trafficker. A monster in tailored suits. Eddie’s theory was simple: Cleo wasn’t engaged. She was imprisoned.
My brain shut off, and I spiraled.
Hard.
So fucking hard.
Sobriety almost slipped through my hands like glass beads on a broken string.
Every bottle within reach begged me to let go, to surrender.
If I stayed clean during the first weeks after, it wasn’t because I wanted to live.
It was because Eddie was watching. My sponsor was next to me at all times, but most importantly, the thought of Cleo locked away made me despise myself, even though none of it was my fault.
That was almost four months ago.
Four months of scheming, waiting, clashing with Eddie, yet trying to fix our shit together.
Four fucking months of disappearing into this so-called ‘rustic cabin’—Eddie’s words, not mine. Rustic my ass. It’s a glass-and-cedar fortress clinging to the cliffs of nowhere, Washington, the Pacific waiting below, wide enough to swallow us whole if it wanted to.
At first, it was just a hideout. A place to meet with the men who helped us plan Cleo’s rescue, a bunker for all the shit we were trying to fix. Now it’s different. Now it’s a safehouse—for her.
She’s here.
Our Cleo.
Breathing the same air, under the same roof.
That should be enough to quiet my mind—to calm me the fuck down. It doesn’t. My chest rattles with the guilt of not saving her sooner. Protecting her is the only thing I can cling to, but even that feels like a half-broken promise.
Footsteps scrape along the stairs, pulling me out of the spiral.
Eddie and I move together toward the room.
I’m balancing a tray—berries aligned, napkin folded crisp, hot tea poured without a single drop.
I told myself it mattered. If I could make breakfast look flawless, maybe some part of the world would feel intact for her.
Perhaps she’d believe there was something left that hadn’t collapsed.
The bedroom door is open. The bed inside is too big and custom-made because Eddie likes to have space and sleep with us.
I wanted to stay there with her—to curl into her side, to convince her she wasn’t alone.
But it isn’t the right time. She needs space.
And I’ll give it, even if it pains me. Even if it drags me closer to relapse.
She’s smaller than I remember. Shrunken.
Like the air itself has been stripped from her.
Leggings cling to her frame, swallowed by Eddie’s oversized sweater.
Fuzzy socks hug her feet, absurdly soft against the brutal reality of what she’s survived.
She looks like she’s wandered out of another life, misplaced in this one.
At least she found the clothes we brought for her.
“Morning,” I say. My voice is lower than I intend, a rasp that catches on the edges of guilt. My eyes snag on the sweater, the socks, and the tray in my hands. Something I’ve been obsessing over, like it could buy her comfort. “You hungry?”
Her gaze lifts to me, then shifts toward Eddie. The look is wary. Fractured. Yet beneath the fear, a fragile relief lingers—hesitant, like a feeling she doesn’t dare claim as her own.
For a second, she hesitates, her shoulders curling inward as though bracing against a blow. Then, after a long beat, she shrugs.
“Maybe.”
It’s not much, but it’s something.
Slowly, I move toward the two chairs in front of the big window and set the tray there, hoping she’ll feel comfortable there. Maybe Eddie was right, and we need to rearrange the room to make it more optimal for the three of us.
The silence stretches, making me itch. I pour her tea before I can overthink it, sliding the mug close but not too close. Eddie watches me, as if cataloging every move. He’s probably worried that I’m going to freak out.
Cleo wraps her hands around the cup, and her shoulders drop just a fraction as she hovers before the chair. She’s not relaxed—nowhere close—but she looks a little less like she’s bracing for impact.
I remind myself not to push. My sarcasm doesn’t always hit right, and right now it could do more harm than good. So, I sit there, pretending patience is natural for me, pretending silence doesn’t itch under my skin like a rash I can’t stop scratching.
She takes a sip. Another. The steam curls around her face, softening edges carved too harshly by survival. I tell myself to shut the fuck up, to let her have this moment, but I’ve never been any good at swallowing words.
“You know—” I nod toward her socks, the absurdly oversized pair drowning her ankles. “You could start a fashion line with those. Fuzzy Chic. Guaranteed bestseller.”
Her mouth twitches—barely. But it’s there. The smallest pull at the corner of her lips, not a smile, not yet, but a fragile shift, like her body remembering what joy once felt like.
And for a second, watching that almost-smile rise and fade, I let myself believe we might get her back.
Eddie sees it too. His eyes cut to mine, and for once, we don’t argue like an old couple that can’t stand each other because there’s too much baggage that we can’t unload. We just sit there, holding on to the miracle of a half-smile like it’s the only proof that this wasn’t a mistake.
For a second, I believe we might pull this off. Which probably means life’s already lining up the next brick for the window.