Chapter 16
It’d been two weeks of this. Different rooms, same hunger. It should have felt routine by now or at least manageable, something she could compartmentalize the way she compartmentalized everything else.
But it didn’t.
Tonight, they’d barely made it past the door before Miller’s hands were in her hair, and now Astoria lay in the wreckage of expensive sheets, sweat cooling on her skin, watching the city lights flicker beyond the window. Miller was curled against her, her breath evening out toward sleep.
Astoria should’ve been doing the same. Instead, she was thinking about the way Miller had looked at her earlier.
Not during—that she could handle, the wanting, the heat—after, when they'd untangled and Miller had reached for her face with something soft in her expression, something that looked dangerously like tenderness.
Don’t, Astoria had thought. Don’t look at me like that.
Miller’s fingers moved against her shoulder blade, tracing a line Astoria knew by heart even though she couldn’t see it.
“Can I ask you something?”
Astoria’s stomach tightened. “That depends on what it is.”
“This scar.” Miller’s thumb brushed over the raised skin. “I noticed it before. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, though.”
The silence stretched between them. Astoria could deflect; she was good at deflecting, made a career out of it. Old injury. Childhood accident. Nothing interesting. The words were right there, easy and dismissive, the kind of answer that stopped questions and closed doors.
Instead, she said, “I was eleven. We had this fence in the backyard—chain link, rusted in places. My father was supposed to fix it, but he worked double shifts most weeks and weekends he drank, so things like that never got done.”
Miller’s hand stilled but didn’t pull away.
“I was climbing to get to the neighbor’s yard. Jenny Kowalski had a trampoline, and sometimes she’d let me use it if I helped her with homework.” Astoria almost smiled at the memory. Almost. “I slipped. Caught my shoulder on a broken link on the way down and tore it open pretty good.”
“Did you need stitches?”
“Yes,” she said flatly. “But we didn’t go to the hospital.
My mother cleaned it with hydrogen peroxide and closed it with butterfly bandages.
We didn’t have insurance. Couldn’t afford the E.R.
visit, and even if we could, she’d have had to explain why her kid was climbing a broken fence unsupervised. ”
Miller was quiet for a moment. “That must’ve hurt. The peroxide, I mean.”
“It did.” Astoria remembered screaming into a dish towel, her mother’s hands shaking, the way the bathroom had smelled like rust and antiseptic for days.
“But I learned something that day. Crying didn’t make it hurt less; it just upset my mother and made her feel guilty she couldn’t do more. So I stopped.”
“Stopped crying?”
“Stopped showing it when things hurt. It was easier.”
She felt Miller shift, propping herself up to look at Astoria’s face. Astoria kept her gaze on the window and the safe distance of the city lights beyond.
“Astoria.”
“It’s fine. It’s ancient history.” She tried for a dismissive tone and landed somewhere closer to brittle. “I turned out okay. The scar's barely visible.”
“I’m not asking about the scar anymore.”
The gentleness in Miller’s voice was unbearable. Astoria wanted to deflect, to make a joke, to steer them back toward safe territory—something she knew how to navigate. But something had cracked open with that story, some seal she'd kept tight for so long she'd forgotten it was there.
“Valerie used to say I was cold.” The words came out before she could stop them.
“That I didn’t know how to feel things properly.
She said it like she was observing something clinical, like she was just being honest. ‘You’re not like other people, Astoria.
You don’t connect. It’s not your fault. You just weren’t built that way. ’”
Miller didn’t interrupt or make sympathetic noises. She just listened, her hand warm and steady on Astoria’s hip.
“And I believed her,” Astoria continued, her throat feeling tight.
“For years, I believed her. I thought she was right, that something fundamental was broken inside me, that I was too guarded, too controlled, too much of some things and not enough of others. She’d say these things in private, and then we’d go to some gala and she’d be charming and warm.
Everyone would adore, and I’d think of course she’s right; look how easy it is for her and how hard it is for me. ”
“The gala,” Miller said quietly. “The one where—”
“Where she humiliated me in front of half of Phoenix Ridge’s donor class?
” Astoria laughed, and it sounded serrated.
“Yes, that one. Someone had asked when we were having children, and she said”—she had to stop and take a breath—”she said I could barely manage my own department, imagine me trying to manage a child.
And everyone laughed because Valerie made it sound like a joke, and I stood there smiling because what else could I do? ”
“That’s not a joke,” she whispered. “That’s cruel.”
“I know that now.” Astoria looked at Miller.
“I didn’t know it then, though. Or maybe I did know somewhere, but I’d gotten so used to translating everything she said into something I could survive that I couldn’t see it clearly anymore.
She’d say something devastating, and then an hour later, she’d bring me wine and rub my shoulders and tell me she was just worried about me, that she wanted me to be happy, that she was the only one who really understood me—”
She stopped. Her chest hurt, a physical ache she hadn’t expected.
“I’m sorry.” The words scraped out of Astoria’s throat raw. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”
“Because I asked. Because you’ve been carrying it alone, and you don’t have to.”
“You don’t know what it was like, living with her.
Fifteen years of—” Astoria shook her head.
“It sounds dramatic when I say it out loud.
Emotional abuse. It sounds like something from a talk show.
But it was just...ordinary and constant.
Little comments that added up until I didn't recognize myself anymore.”
“It doesn't sound dramatic. It sounds exhausting.”
Astoria felt something loosen in her chest, terrifying in its unfamiliarity.
She was used to people reacting to stories about Valerie with disbelief or dismissiveness.
But she seemed so lovely. Are you sure you’re not exaggerating?
Every relationship has rough patches. She wasn’t used to simple acknowledgement with no judgment, no attempt to fix or minimize.
“I keep waiting for you to look at me differently,” Astoria admitted. “Like I’m damaged goods or worse, like I’m someone to pity.”
Miller reached up and brushed a strand of hair from Astoria’s face, her touch impossibly gentle.
“I’m looking at you,” she said. “And I see someone who has survived something hard and built something extraordinary anyway. I don’t see damaged goods.
I see someone who learned to protect herself because she had to, and now she’s trying to figure out what it looks like to trust someone. ”
Astoria’s vision blurred. She blinked, furious at herself, at the tears that had no business being here in this anonymous hotel room with this woman who somehow kept saying exactly the right things.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she whispered. “Whatever this is. I don’t know how to be with someone who doesn’t…”
“Doesn’t what?”
“Doesn’t make me feel like I have to earn the right to take up space.”
“You don’t have to earn anything with me.”
“That’s what terrifies me.”
They looked at each other in the low light, the city humming sixteen floors below, and Astoria felt more exposed than she had when Miller had undressed her an hour ago.
This was different, showing someone the parts she’d kept hidden, the wounds she’d protected, the girl who’d learned not to cry.
And yet, Miller hadn’t run. She was still here, still looking at her and pulling her close.
And Astoria had no idea what to do with that. The silence that followed wasn't uncomfortable. That surprised her.
Astoria had braced for awkwardness, for Miller to fill the space with reassurances or questions or the kind of well-meaning commentary that would make her regret saying anything. Instead, Miller just looked at her for a long moment, something unreadable in her expression, and then she moved closer.
Miller’s arms came around her, pulling Astoria against her chest, one hand sliding up to cradle the back of her head. No words, just warmth, steady and unhurried, the kind of embrace that expected nothing in return.
Astoria went rigid for a moment, an instinct, years of training herself not to need this. But Miller didn't let go or react to the tension; she just kept holding her. Something inside Astoria cracked a little further.
She let herself be held.
It was harder than the sex. That she could do—bodies and heat and the temporary obliteration of thought—but this was different.
This was letting someone hold her while she felt like an exposed nerve, trusting that Miller wouldn't use the vulnerability against her later or file it away as ammunition the way Valerie always had.
Miller’s hand moved slowly through her hair, a soothing rhythm that made Astoria’s throat tight.
“You don't have to say anything else,” Miller murmured against her temple. “We can just stay like this.”
Astoria pressed her face into Miller's shoulder and breathed. The sheets smelled like sex and expensive detergent and something underneath that was just Miller—that particular warm scent she'd started craving between their meetings.