Chapter 21 The Quiet Hours #2
Sometimes he looked at me like he was trying to solve something, not with accusation, not yet. Just calculation.
Kids his age didn’t miss absences. They cataloged them.
The rain outside had faded to a nervous drip. I watched my own shadow flicker across the hallway as I re-entered the small living room where Aiden waited, upright and still, arms crossed as if physically restraining himself from reaching for the world. Or for me.
He glanced up, eyes searching for something familiar amid the jumble of mismatched second-hand furniture and the pile of comic books and old action figures that cluttered our living room. His jaw tightened until he finally said, “I should go.” His voice was low, already heading for the door.
I nodded, not trusting myself to say goodbye.
We walked towards the door together, boots scuffing the linoleum, and for a dozen heartbeats, we were just two people bound by nothing but proximity and unfinished business.
At the threshold, he hesitated. The hallway light carved heavy shadows under his brows, making him look both older and younger at once.
“Can I ask you something?” he said, and I could tell from the way he asked that the real question wasn’t the one he wanted to voice.
I met his gaze, summoning every ounce of levity I had left. “Depends.”
He looked at the battered apartment door, at the splintered frame, and the crooked numbers. Then he said, “Mateo’s father. Is he… around?”
The air between us froze. It was the first time in ten years anyone had asked me that question without flinching.
That night rose up fast and merciless: the bonfire throwing wild light into the trees, smoke stinging my eyes, laughter breaking apart into something uglier, the sharp, metallic scent of blood threading through the heat.
I remember the weight of it most. The beast pressing against me, foreign, invasive, leaving something behind that felt permanent.
For months after, I survived by going numb. Each breath tasted like smoke.
I looked at Aiden and, for a flicker of a second, saw the boy he must have been, whatever violence had shaped him etched into the hard lines of his face. I wondered if he’d ever asked about his own father.
Or if he’d always known.
I made him wait, just because I could. Then I shrugged, voice flat as old paint: “He’s not part of our story.”
It was the truth, or as much of it as I would ever give. The real story was something no one deserved to inherit.
Aiden searched my face, eyes bright and wounded and still somehow forgiving. He opened his mouth, closed it, then nodded once, sharp, almost military. “If you ever want to talk about it…”
A decade of secrets had made me a veteran at ending conversations that threatened to draw blood.
I leaned against the splintered frame, half inside the apartment and half out, feeling the gravitational tug of Aiden’s presence pull at something deep in my stomach, a tension wound so tight it might snap if I let it.
His question hovered between us, the air thick with all the things neither of us would ever say.
“Talk?” I tilted my head, smiling without warmth. “That’s funny. People only ask when they already think they know the story. Trust me, Aiden, you wouldn’t like the ending.” I tried to keep my voice flat, but it trembled on that final syllable, betraying a seam in my armor.
He laughed then, a short, sharp sound, but there was nothing amused in it. “You think you’re the only one with ugly pages?”
His hand went up, knuckles grazing his temple, eyes glimmering like polished amber, drawing me in with an intensity that made my heart race. “You’re not. You think I scare that easily?”
The words were hard, but the tremor beneath them was unmistakable. “I know things you wouldn’t believe. I’ve done things…”
He cut himself off, biting the rest of the confession back, and I realized how close he was to something raw and how badly he wanted me to see it.
We both knew we’d gone too far.
I could smell rain and old cigarette smoke on his jacket and the faint trace of blood still clinging to his skin, reminders of the animal beneath the man.
It should have repulsed me, but instead it made me want to touch him, palm to cheek, just to prove he was real and not another nightmare I’d conjured from memory.
He stared at me, leaning against the opposite wall like he was holding up the whole apartment building with his back. He flexed his hands, opening and closing them, as if the effort might wring the truth from between his fingers.
“You get tired, you know? Carrying it all. Hiding it. Some nights it feels like if you put it down, it would just… swallow you whole.” His eyes met mine, and for a heartbeat I saw a boy beneath the wolf, a boy who’d watched people he loved get torn apart and had survived only because he’d learned to do the tearing himself.
“If I told you everything, you’d hate me,” I said. It wasn’t hypothetical. I meant it. “You’d never look at me the same.”
He didn’t flinch. “Try me.”
The hallway lights flickered, casting our shadows over each other like layers of bad history. I wanted to scream at him, or throw something, or kiss him until both of us forgot our own names, but I settled for clutching the doorframe until my knuckles ached.
“I can’t,” I whispered. “Not tonight.”
He nodded, jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscle jump. “Me neither.” Then, softer, “I’ll walk you to work tomorrow. If you want.”
It was an olive branch, or maybe a dare. I took it for what it was, a small mercy in a world that rarely offered any.
“Okay,” I said. “Yeah.” I didn’t bother with a goodbye, didn’t trust myself not to say something that would unravel both of us.
I reached for the doorknob and eased it shut between us. The latch clicked like a period at the end of a failed sentence.
Inside, the air still hummed with everything we hadn’t said. I leaned back against the door, letting the cold seep in through my shirt. Tried to steady my breathing but failed. My hands shook. My legs itched to run.
In the kitchen, I rummaged blindly for a glass and ran the tap until the water was ice-cold. I drank too fast, chasing the burn in my chest. The fridge hummed. That was the only sound.
I checked on Mateo. He was half-buried in sleep, small again in the dim light. I stood there longer than I meant to. An old, useless prayer flickered through me, let him stay untouched. For him to live a life where the past never clawed its way up to him.
Down the hall, the unpaid bills slouched on the table. The armchair sagged where ghosts liked to sit. I’d left too much unfinished. Too many things unnamed.
Tonight, though, I’d almost let myself believe in something else. Not healing. Just raw, ragged honesty.
I lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling. Rain tapped against the windows, softer now. I remembered the weight of Aiden’s arm. The way he’d looked at me, like I was breakable.
I hated him for it.
I hated that I didn’t hate him.
I slept in fragments. When dreams came, wolves ran through wet streets. A river glowed beneath the pavement. And on the far bank stood my son, older, brighter somehow, waiting for me to cross.
When I woke, the city was pale blue and soundless, the kind of hush that only exists at the top of the world’s first inhale.
My head was packed with cotton and regret, but the body always wants what it wants, so I made coffee, and toast, and forced myself into the shape of a functioning human being.
I woke Mateo with a kiss on the forehead, but instead of the usual groggy complaints, he blinked at me with a solemn, knowing look.
“Did he leave?” he asked.
My pulse stuttered. “Who?”
He held my gaze a second longer than necessary. “The wolf guy.”
I froze, my heart stumbling over itself. How could he know?
“Yeah,” I said, too quickly. I forced something that was supposed to be a smile. “He went home.”
Mateo studied me like he was checking for cracks. Then he nodded once and slid out of bed.
“Okay.” Then, after a pause. “He smells like rain,” Mateo said quietly. “Like you did last night.”
He disappeared into the bathroom, casual as anything.
I stood there longer than I should have, the question replaying. Not what he asked, but how he asked it. Calm. Certain.
Maybe that was the secret all along: accept what you’re given and keep moving forward.
I drained my coffee, staring out the fogged-up window at the city’s scaffold of hope and disappointment. I could still feel last night clinging to my skin, the memory of Aiden’s eyes on me, the question he’d asked wedged under my ribs like a splinter.
I knew it would fester; it always did.
But for now, the apartment was warm, and the light was gold, and Mateo was humming some tuneless melody in the next room, and for one miraculous second, the monsters stayed outside.
I pulled on a loose tank and soft shorts, the fabric light against my skin, and let the slow rhythm of the morning settle in.
Mateo came back from the bathroom and disappeared into the blanket fort he’d built the night before, less a kingdom now, more a barricade of pillows and sheets dragged from the hall closet. He claimed it was for “airflow.” I didn’t argue.
In the kitchen, I mixed batter and poured pancakes into the skillet. They browned fast in the heat. I flipped them without looking, set a stack on a plate, and left the syrup bottle on the counter, ready for Mateo’s eager hands.
I set the table and cut up some fruit, strawberries, peaches, and blueberries, moving on autopilot. Mateo rustled around in his fort, narrating something under his breath.
The apartment felt almost normal.
We were taking our time, no rush today. Summer light filtered through the windows, soft and deceptive.
I threw on a cardigan and caught my reflection in the warped mirror by the door, tired, but steady. Sleep still clung to me, but so did something else, a calm that felt borrowed.
The world outside could wait.
It always collected eventually.
I focused on the door, my heart pounding like a drum, lingering on the spot where Aiden had been the night before.
Would he come back?
My mind erupted with a flurry of images: his laughter echoing in my ears, the intensity of his gaze, the way he made me feel seen yet exposed.
That was the problem.
A part of me craved the solace of his presence, while another recoiled, wary of the emotions he stirred. Desire pulled one way. Instinct pulled the other. I didn’t know which one would win.
I stared toward where Mateo was hidden inside his fort, my mind swirling with secrets I wasn’t ready to face, and the man I wasn’t ready to trust.
Not yet.
But maybe soon.