Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Kit
The door clicks behind him—quiet, final, far too polite for what just happened between us.
It closes with the softest sound, as if he’s still trying not to take up space in my life, still trying to leave without leaving a trace.
But that sound slices through me like it always does, like it has for years, and I don’t even try to pretend that it doesn’t land somewhere deep in my chest where he still lives.
He said I didn’t want him. That I never would.
And maybe I should’ve corrected him, should’ve told him that want has never been the issue.
But I didn’t. Because want is easy. Want is instinct.
Want is what burns under my skin the second I smell his scent or hear his voice.
Want is my body remembering him before my mind can even brace itself.
It’s love that terrifies me.
I don’t move.
I don’t move. Every muscle in my body is pulled tight, like even the smallest exhale might let the grief devour me. The silence he left behind is deafening, and I know that if I try to speak—if I try to breathe through the wreckage—I might fall apart.
The room still feels full of him.
The lingering scent of whatever he’s wearing, sage, wood, and sin, clings to the air like a confession neither of us could quite make.
And under that is something older, something so buried I almost don’t recognize it.
Him. The him I knew. The boy who used to sing to me in the dark, who wrote songs about love and longing, and used my name like it was a promise.
The boy who used to make me feel like I was the only real thing in his world—until he didn’t.
I sit down slowly, carefully, like I’m trying not to disturb the memory still vibrating between us.
My knees fold like they no longer know how to support me, and I sink into the chair, not because I’m tired, but because standing feels like too much.
I press my fingertips to my lips—not because I’m cold or nervous, but because they’re tingling, sensitized, like they’re bruised from a kiss that never happened.
Roderick didn’t touch me. Didn’t lean in. Didn’t push. But I felt it—the way his body yearned toward mine, the way his gaze begged me to let him, just once more.
One last time.
I felt him holding back, not because he didn’t want me, but because—for once—he respected the boundary I set. And somehow, that made it worse.
There was a moment. One breath. One impossible second suspended in time, where I wanted him to forget everything I’d said.
Where I wanted him to take what he used to take—my mouth, my breath, my reason—and remind me what it was like to fall apart in his arms. I longed for his hands on my hips, his mouth on my neck, that familiar sound in his throat when he lost control.
I wanted to taste the years between us and prove they hadn’t dulled the fire. I wanted to know that he still remembered how to ruin me in all the best ways.
But I told him to stay away.
And he listened.
That’s what undoes me.
Because Rod never used to listen. He used to bulldoze his way through apologies, boundaries, and sense. He would show up at two in the morning with bloodshot eyes after not calling me for days and still had the audacity to tell me that he needed me.
He used to throw his need at me like it was penance. But today . . . today he gave me honesty—stripped bare of performance, free of manipulation.
He gave me pain. Truth.
Truth that cracks ribs.
Truth that splits you open from the inside, that presses against your lungs, taking all the oxygen until you can’t breathe, and still begs to be heard.
He said he didn’t know where we’d end up. That he didn’t deserve me. That he still loved me. And then he walked out.
Who walks away after giving you the leftover pieces of himself?
And now I’m sitting here, hollowed out by restraint, scorched by something far crueler than desire: the memory of what it used to feel like to be his.
My thighs press together as if my body’s trying to quell the ache blooming between them.
It’s a craving that’s crawled out of hibernation.
It’s my body recalling his weight over mine, his mouth between my thighs, the way he used to whisper my name when he came, like I was the prayer he wasn’t supposed to say out loud.
I’m flushed and wet and furious at myself for remembering. For feeling this way—for still being this wound-tight when it comes to him. Because even after everything, even after the lies and the years and the silence . . . I still want him.
Even after everything, he makes me feel a lot more than what Timothy has in the past two years.
That desire pulses through my veins, coils around my spine, and lurks low and persistent in my gut. It’s not love. Not right now. It’s lust, grief, and something feral. Something I won’t name because if I do, I’d break apart entirely.
I tip my head back and press my palms to my eyes, trying to trap the tears before they have the chance to fall. But they don’t come. I’m too scraped thin for that. Too undone.
This isn’t sadness—it’s ruin.
I’m stuck in the aftershock of a man who finally gave me the one thing I’ve begged for: sincerity.
Truths without me having to guess and hope I’m right. And somehow that hurts more than all the betrayals combined.
Because it means he might really be trying to change, to be better.
And if he is . . . if he’s truly crawling his way back from the wreckage of who he used to be . . . then what the fuck am I supposed to do with this version of him? This version who looks at me like I’m still his.
Who says he still belongs to me, like it’s not an apology or a plea—but a fact.
I didn’t ask for this.
I asked him to leave. To stay away.
And now I can’t stop imagining what would’ve happened if I hadn’t.
If I’d stood up. Crossed the room. Pulled him in by the collar of his shirt and kissed him until all that tension between us shattered. I can feel it. I can taste it. And it makes me sick with want.
Because I remember exactly who I was when I was his.
And the terrifying truth is—that maybe I still am.
“Don’t do this to yourself, Kit,” I say out loud, holding myself accountable. “You know how it ends.”
I saw it with my parents. Dad never stopped cheating.
Mom was just good at pretending it never hurt.
Not to mention his parents. How many times have Clara Vanderpool and Caleb Wilder divorced?
Five? I lost count. The last time, they didn’t even get married again before Caleb was caught by the paparazzi at a club fucking a twenty-something-year-old college student.
It never ends. They feel entitled to everything. If only I could find someone who could make me feel a tenth of what I do for him.
Is that even possible?