Chapter 100
Chapter One Hundred
Kit
The Wilders are back in Seattle.
They finally convinced Julian to move in with Rhodes while he continues recovering. From what exactly? I still don’t fully know. Cleo’s been tight-lipped about the details—just vague references to an accident, too many broken bones, and a long road ahead.
She doesn’t talk much about her brothers, not really.
She’s careful with their stories, holds them close like something sacred and private, which I respect.
I do. But a part of me—selfish, aching—still wishes she’d let me in just a little more.
Just enough to feel like I still belong in the periphery of their lives.
I waited a week after they arrived before reaching out.
Gave them time to settle, to breathe in the old familiarity of this city that never quite feels the same every time you return.
When I finally called Cleo, the conversation stayed practical, mostly about work.
D&D Talent is unraveling in slow motion.
Barret is leading the lawsuit, and based on what I’ve heard, it’s going to bleed every last cent from my father’s estate. Justice with a jagged edge.
It’s bittersweet—watching it all fall apart.
There’s satisfaction in knowing the truth is rising to the surface, that the people who protected him or enabled him are finally being forced to answer for it.
But it’s also exhausting. Because some of those same people—people I once trusted, worked alongside, maybe even cared about—now look at me like I’m the enemy.
They don’t know the truth. They don’t know I’m a victim just like them or that I’m the one who started this.
That it was my voice behind the curtain.
My signature buried deep in the first file that unraveled the whole thing.
And maybe they never will. That’s the price of anonymity, I guess.
You don’t get the credit—but you also don’t get the absolution.
I asked Cleo if I could talk to Roderick. If she thought he’d even be open to it. She said she’d pass along the message, but her tone told me everything I needed to know—she doubts he’ll want to see me.
“He’s on a journey of healing,” she said.
And I’m part of his past, she implied. The part that hurt him.
The part that still might.
It’s strange how silence can echo louder than words. How can someone not calling, writing, or looking at you feel like a scream?
It’s sad that I’ve become a different version now. I was all along, but now I know I was part of the problem and not the solution.
I’m his wound. Not the person who tried, not the girl who loved him, not the one who used to make him laugh. Just the hurt. Just the reminder of what went wrong. Of who failed him.
He might never forgive me for not listening. For choosing safety over truth. For being complicit, even if I didn’t realize it then. And maybe he shouldn’t forgive me. Perhaps I don’t deserve that kind of grace.
This is what I became—an ache he had to let go of.
And I’m reaping what I sowed, aren’t I?
Everything is growing now—and it looks a lot like loneliness.
Today, I’m in the store, hands moving automatically as I alphabetize the classical section.
The air smells faintly of old vinyl and cedarwood oil from the candles I bought earlier that I left by the register.
I’m trying to ground myself with something routine, something predictable—Debussy, Dvo?ák, Elgar, Faure—but my brain keeps drifting.
Thinking about my current life—or the lack of it.
Then the bell over the door rings, like time folds in on itself. I feel him before I even turn around. It’s a shift in the air, a pull in my chest, the unmistakable sense that something unresolved just walked into the room.
My spine straightens. My breath catches somewhere in the middle of a shallow inhale. And when I turn, it’s him. Roderick.
“Hey,” I say, the word cracking as it leaves me. Tentative. Small. Like I’m not sure I have permission to speak at all.
He doesn’t smile, but his voice is calm. “I heard you needed to speak to me.”
“If you . . . I don’t want to—” I stop because the truth is, I don’t even know where to begin. Do I start with the business? With the apology? With the million what-ifs that kept me up every night for a decade?
“Are you okay?” he asks, and the concern in his eyes breaks me a little. Just enough to remind me that I used to mean something to him. Maybe I still do. Or maybe I’m just a ghost of that girl, the version of me that once felt safe in his presence.
“I’ve been better,” I confess, because there’s no point in lying when I’m standing here hoping to trade honesty for peace.
Maybe forgiveness.
Maybe closure.
Maybe just a few moments that don’t hurt.
“Cleo mentioned you needed to talk,” he says, then raises both hands like he’s trying to create distance between us—not physically, but emotionally. “If not, I wouldn’t have come. Since . . .” He shrugs, eyes drifting to the floor for a beat. “You know.”
“I’ve been reaching out to everyone my father wronged,” I begin, forcing the words out.
My fingers tighten around the edges of the record sleeve in my hand.
I close my eyes briefly, gather myself, and look back at him.
“You’re welcome to join Barret’s lawsuit.
Settle with my father’s estate. Or . . .
I don’t know what other options there are. That’s all I have to offer.”
His jaw tenses. He doesn’t look angry—just tired.
“He hurt you too,” he says, voice low but firm. “You think suing his estate is going to bring closure? Will it give anyone back what they lost?”
I open my mouth, then close it again, because no. It won’t bring back the twelve years I lost without him. It won’t undo the birthdays, the holidays, the quiet mornings that could’ve been ours. It won’t unwrite the nights I lay awake wondering why I wasn’t enough.
Why did he choose the groupies over me? But that wasn’t the story. It was what my father wanted me to believe.
“Sorry,” I murmur.
“I’m sorry too,” he says.
My eyes sting, and I can’t tell if it’s from relief or regret. “That day, everything looked . . . I should’ve—”
“Yeah,” he interrupts gently. “But I fucked up too. I should’ve—”
“We were kids,” I say quickly, cutting him off because I can’t let him shoulder all of this. “We were teenagers and scared and he had already started manipulating you long before I ever figured it out.”
“Nineteen isn’t that young,” he replies, but there’s no conviction behind it.
“It is,” I say. “It’s young, stupid, and eager to please the people who sign our paychecks—or who are supposed to love us unconditionally. You didn’t know any better. And I . . . I wanted to believe him because I needed him to love me.”
He nods slowly, his gaze softening just a little. “I blame the adults. The ones who convinced me I was entitled to everything while never teaching me what normal even meant.”
There’s a pause. Not uncomfortable, just . . . necessary. Like we’re both recalibrating.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “I’m not trying to fix anything. I just needed you to know I see it now. All of it.”
“You don’t have to explain,” he says, though his voice catches slightly. “I’ve been working through it. I’m still angry. But not at you. Never at you. I knew what he did and why you wouldn’t forgive me. He set it up so that you’ll never forgive me.”
“But there’s nothing to forgive,” I object.
He shrugs his shoulder probably as if to say, Well, it’s too late now, isn’t it?
We both go quiet again, and in that silence, something shifts. Not forgiveness. Not quite. But maybe the start of understanding. A thaw. A small crack in the ice between us.
“I wish I could stay, but . . . I’m still working on things,” he says finally. “After I lost you, I just let myself go. The will to be myself . . . it disappeared. It’s nothing personal. I just have to find myself first.” He turns like he might walk away.
“I hope you find happiness,” I whisper, the words sticking in my throat. “See you around, maybe?”
“I’m sure we will,” he says without turning back. “I’ll just have to be patient.”
And maybe that’s all we’ll ever be now. Two people who broke apart. Two people who once loved each other deeply and now share a scar. Not enemies. Not friends. Not lovers.
Just two souls walking away from the same fire—still singed, still raw—but maybe, finally, on separate paths toward healing.