Chapter 54
Chapter Fifty-Four
Roderick
I give myself a day to . . . what, exactly? To lick the wounds left by her silence? To mourn the version of us that never had the chance to be reborn? Maybe to pretend I didn’t feel something shift beneath my skin when I kissed her. My Kit.
Maybe to stand still long enough to accept that the second chance I spent years secretly begging the universe for had already slipped through my fingers the moment I stepped back into her life.
Truth is, I don’t even know how to categorize what that moment—that kiss was.
What it meant. There aren’t words that fit neatly around it.
No label that can contain the feeling of her lips on mine and the way my entire fucking existence recalibrated in a heartbeat.
All I know is it was everything—until it ended. Just like it did twelve years ago.
Only this time, I was lucid enough to feel every goddamn second of it unraveling in real time.
Back then, Kit and I broke up without even managing an ending.
No big fight after she caught me. There weren’t any grand gestures.
Just a long, stretched silence. It was as if something sacred had been lost, and we were both too young, or too foolish, to know how to go looking for it.
She must’ve said something after she saw me with another woman giving me a blow job.
How I regret that moment, but it was staged.
I had to get really fucked up to do what Connor Dempsey had asked me to do.
“It’s a one-time thing, you have to pretend like you’ve pretended all other times,” he said. “It doesn’t count. It never counts.”
But this time they took it too far, and it fucking did. It counted. Not just because she saw it, but because it really happened.
And I can’t even remember exactly the words Kit said to me before she walked away. The only thing I carry with me is the moment I realized everything between us was broken—and it was on me.
Everything from those days is blurry around the edges. My memory is a burned reel—spots missing, others too bright and too loud. I was wrecked. Lost in some murky, drug-fueled spiral where language dissolved into sounds and even her voice sounded distorted.
I remember Eddie, our manager, watching me like I was some stubborn, half-drowned animal, muttering, “Go get her, asshole,” as if that would fix everything. Like love was a song I could just play again, smoother this time.
He always was the closest thing I had to a voice of reason, not that I gave a damn. He saved me more times than I can think of . . . until he left to deal with real life —that’s what he said.
I wonder if I went to him now and told him the truth—told him how far I’ve fallen—if he’ll help me fix my shit, help me find myself. Then again, maybe he already knows I’ve hit the bottom of the barrel.
Everyone knows, right?
Every shattered piece of me is out there for the world to consume—my downfall carefully cataloged in glossy tabloid spreads next to photos of my father, the blueprint of bad decisions I’ve been following like a religion. Anyone can buy them at a newsstand or even at a grocery store.
They exaggerate my behavior, sure. But not by much.
I could go and ask for them to retract, but it’s useless.
The problem is that when it happened, I was too far gone to dispute it, too fucked up to even recognize myself in the stories they printed.
And maybe the saddest part is that no one is reading them and wondering how they could help.
Nope, they just enjoy my downfall. Humanity is morbid; they want everybody’s pain.
It makes them feel like they’re not alone, or that someone else has it worse, so their life isn’t shitty.
There might be a place where I can find some truths about what happened to me during the first five, maybe seven years after we broke up. The letters I wrote to Kit. There’re probably dozens of them. Maybe more. They weren’t meant to save me—or for her to read them.
They were just a way to remind myself that I used to feel something other than numb. That I used to love someone who made me want to be a better version of what my father pushed me to become.
I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but I know I bled through them.
Poured out every ugly truth, every fragile hope, every fractured version of love I couldn’t say out loud.
I wasn’t sure if she’d ever read them—or if I would ever send them.
But I kept writing, hoping her soul could hear the apology I was too cowardly to say to her face.
If they’re still somewhere—tucked away in my old room, forgotten in some drawer—I could maybe piece together who I used to be.
Who we were. But odds are, they tossed everything.
Every trace of me. Every broken thing I left behind.
Still, I could ask. Call Barret or maybe Dexter. Fuck, I could even try Alec.
No, not Alec.
He was the one who broke my nose when they finally had enough. He was the one who looked at me like I wasn’t just fucking up—I was poisoning everything we’d built. And he wasn’t completely wrong. If I called him now, he might finish what he started. And maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing.
But eventually, I’ll have to face them. Accountability isn’t optional—it’s the whole point.
It’s the price of healing, and so far, I’ve been skating past it like I still deserve to be let off easy.
Not a great start. I haven’t done the work.
I haven’t made the calls. I haven’t apologized.
Not to the band. Not even to her. Not for the way I set fire to everything we were and walked away like I wasn’t the one holding the fucking match.
Instead, I kissed her.
And it wasn’t planned. It wasn’t rational.
It sure as hell wasn’t part of any twelve-step redemption arc.
It was instinct—desire, and ache, and history detonating at once.
Her mouth on mine felt like the missing note in a song I hadn’t been able to finish since the day she left.
Her lips tasted like a memory I wasn’t ready for.
And when I touched her—when I felt her body press against mine with that wild, trembling energy like she wanted to crawl inside my skin and scream at me for everything—I couldn’t stop.
I didn’t want to.
There was hunger in it. Fury. Lust that had nowhere else to go.
Her fingers dug into my chest like she was trying to break me open and see if anything was still alive inside.
My hand was in her hair, my other pulling her closer, locking her to me like I could still make her mine. We didn’t breathe—we devoured.
Kissed like it was our last language.
Like every second apart had been a lie, and this—the heat, the friction, the fucking gravity—was the only truth that mattered.
And then she pushed me away.
It was like the moment shattered something in her, and she couldn’t let it go any further without losing whatever fragile scaffolding she’d built to survive me. Her breath hitched. Her eyes were wild. And I knew. I fucking knew I had ruined it again.
Because I never even said I was sorry.
Not once. I haven’t told her I hate myself for every choice that carved distance between us. That I’d take it all back if I could. That the silence between us has been the loudest goddamn noise in my life.
I kissed her instead of apologizing.
And now all I have is the memory of her mouth, the aftertaste of need, and the silence she left behind—again.
Not exactly the cleanest way to start a second chance.
Not when I’ve done nothing to deserve it.
To deserve it, I have to start by fixing everything I’ve done wrong, right? Start from scratch and show myself and the world that I can be more than a washed-up musician.
If I want anything close to a second chance, I have to earn it. Not with another kiss. Not with another fuck. But with honesty that splits you open—exposes everything you’d rather keep buried.
Because if she ever lets me close again, I have to be myself. And it has to start with me becoming someone worth forgiving. A version of myself that will love her and never break her ever again.