Chapter 39
VI
Mara’s asleep. I’m not.
Same position as a few nights ago, same ceiling, same generator hum, same ductwork cough, same Rot doing its midnight thing around me while I lie on my back and my thoughts repeat like a broken record.
I’ve been replaying every interaction with Sting since I handed him the bag of stuff about Rothwell, trying to figure out the moment things changed for him, and why whatever he read in those papers freaked him out enough to avoid me like the plague.
Day one after I gave him the papers: nothing. Normal. He was at the table, handled a trade meeting, passed me in the corridor without incident. I figured he hadn’t read them yet.
Day two: the change. Didn’t say much at breakfast. Didn’t look at me when I sat down. Left early. I told myself he was busy.
Day three: the supply dispute. The look he gave Rogue. The corridor where he stopped and turned and caught me watching. His face was different, like nothing I’d ever seen before. That’s when I knew.
I turn onto my side. Mara’s breathing is slow and even.
She’s gotten good at sleeping in the Rot.
Better than me, honestly. She curls up, goes out, doesn’t stir until morning.
Meanwhile, I’m lying here running a mental timeline of a man’s emotional withdrawal and trying to figure out which page of my dead father’s evidence broke him.
Sting doesn’t withdraw for no reason. He’s not moody. He’s not the type to pull away because he’s having a bad week. Everything Sting does has a reason, even if the reason is buried under six layers of operational logic and emotional armor.
So what the hell is going on with him?
I keep coming back to his mother, the nursing home, Dorothy, and the city budget that once funded elder care that ended up being drained into shell companies.
If Sting read those pages the way I read them, he would have seen the connection immediately.
He would have traced the money from the infrastructure fund to the social services cuts, and he would have landed on the line item that closed Rothwell Elder Care.
He would have sat there and felt the entire history of his mother’s death rewritten in front of him.
And he would have seen my father’s name.
Not on the corruption side of course. On the council side.
Dad was on the city council when those cuts were made.
Dad was in the room when the budget was approved.
And maybe he fought it. Afterall, the evidence suggests he did, or at least tried.
But the end result was the same. The nursing home closed.
Sting’s mother lost her job. Dorothy died after the transfer.
I can see how that would break him. Not because the evidence is right or wrong but because it’s complicated.
Sting has spent much of his adult life dividing the world into the people who run things and the people who get crushed by them.
The idea that my dad could be on both sides of that line, fighting the system while being part of it, would mean rethinking everything he’s believed since his mother died.
I get it. For him, it’s easier to believe my father was one of the crooks.
Corrupt official, corrupt system, case closed.
What the evidence shows is messier, though.
A man inside a broken system trying to fix it while the system broke the people around him anyway.
That’s not a story that fits inside Sting’s boxes.
It wouldn’t fit in a lot of peoples’ boxes.
And I’m lying here in the dark wondering if he hates my father more now, not less.
I think about the Skylight Room, when I thought, We’re getting somewhere. I thought the door was opening.
Maybe it was and maybe that’s the problem. The evidence didn’t confirm his worldview but instead, shot it all to hell. Sting doesn’t like complicated. When that’s what he sees, he shuts down.
That’s what this is, and the man is shut down.
I roll onto my back again and think about Armen’s hands on me this afternoon. The ease of it. How good it felt to be touched by someone who wasn’t making it hard. Armen showed me he wanted me and let me grind against his hard cock.
I want that with Sting. I want Sting to want me without the withdrawal, the processing, the six layers between his feelings and his mouth.
I want him to walk up to me and put his hands on me and say something honest, even if it’s ugly, even if it’s I don’t know what to do with what I found. Anything. I’d take anything right now.
I’ve been patient. I’ve given him room. It’s been hard though, the hardest thing I’ve done since entering the Rot.
My instinct is to push. I’m a pushy pain in the ass.
I walked into the east wing with Mara and came back bleeding because I couldn’t wait for someone else to do it.
I pinned Sting to a couch and pulled his mask off because I couldn’t wait for him to take it off himself.
Patience is not my thing.
I’m done waiting. I don’t know what tomorrow looks like yet, whether it’s a conversation or confrontation or me cornering Sting and refusing to move until he tells me what’s going on. The version of me that lies in bed and hopes Sting figures his shit out on his own timeline?
She’s done.
I close my eyes. Sleep doesn’t come for a long time, but when it does, my last thought isn’t about evidence or Dorothy or budget lines. It’s about the way Sting looked over his shoulder at me for that one second where I really saw him, conflicted, torn, and fighting himself.
The man I want is in there. And tomorrow, I’m going to get him out.