33. Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Three
Sulla
The flight from Scotland to Saint Louis is eighteen hours. I spend all of them staring at nothing.
Reid was on a different flight. Different airline. Different everything.
We didn’t see each other at the hotel after that night. Three days of eating in our rooms, avoiding lobbies, existing in the same building like ghosts who couldn’t bear to be seen.
When they released us on day three, I left early. Didn’t wait to see if she’d appear. Couldn’t bear to watch her walk past me without looking.
The sanctuary van picks me up from the airport. Laura is driving—she volunteered, she says. Wanted to see how I was doing.
“You look terrible,” she observes.
“Thanks.”
“Did you win?”
“Third place.”
“That’s still good. Fifty thousand is—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
She goes quiet. Drives. The Missouri landscape passes outside the window—green hills, humid air, familiar in a way that feels wrong now. Scotland was gray. Wet. Reid’s shoulder four feet from mine in a tent.
“There’s someone, isn’t there?” Laura asks quietly.
I don’t answer.
“Sulla, you can talk to—”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
She doesn’t push. Just drives.
We reach the sanctuary by late afternoon. The main buildings look the same. The gardens. The therapy center. Everything as I left it four weeks ago.
Four weeks that changed everything.
Laura helps me carry my bags to my cabin. The small, isolated one at the edge of the property. Away from everyone else.
“Dinner’s at six if you want to join,” she says. “Everyone’s excited to see you.”
I doubt that. But I nod.
She leaves. I stand in my cabin doorway, looking at the space I’ve occupied for almost two years. Bed. Desk. Chair. Window overlooking nothing but trees.
Empty.
Goddess, it’s so empty.
I drop my bags and pull out my phone. Make the call before I can second-guess myself.
I don’t call the facility.
I call the Sanctuary’s attorney.
Five years of memory care. Paid in full from the account that holds my share of the Fortuna gold.
Three hundred thousand dollars transferred before noon.
Reid’s father’s facility will be told an anonymous donor stepped in.
They will not be told my name.
Done.
Sitting on the edge of my bed, I stare at my phone.
It won’t undo the betrayal. Won’t make her forgive me. Won’t change what I was or what I kept from her.
But her father will be safe. She won’t have to worry about his care for five years. Can focus on her business, her life, herself.
This isn’t about winning her back. This is about doing what’s right.
Even if she never knows it was me. Even if she hates me forever.
I force myself to go to the dining hall for dinner. If I hide in my cabin the first night back, I’ll hide every night. And I’m trying to be different. Trying to be better.
Even if Reid’s not here to see it.
The dining hall goes quiet when I enter. All eyes on me. Thrax. Varro. Quintus. Cassius. Lucius. Victor. Their women. A dozen others.
I get food—roasted chicken, vegetables, bread. Sit at my usual table. The empty one near the window.
Wait for everyone to go back to their conversations.
They don’t.
Thrax stands, walks over. Sits across from me. The first time he’s voluntarily sat at my table in… ever.
“So,” he says. “You were on a reality show.”
“Yes.”
Varro approaches. Sits beside Thrax. “How did your quest go?”
“Did you win?” Quintus asks, sitting down too.
My table—the empty, isolated table—is suddenly crowded.
“Can’t say. NDA. You’ll see when it airs.”
Victor shrugs, “Fair enough.”
Cassius sits last. The man whose past I erased — who spent years with nothing, rebuilding himself from scraps. He’s been kind to me here at the sanctuary—kinder than I deserve. But he’s never initiated conversation.
Now he looks at me with those gentle eyes and asks, “Did you find what you were looking for?”
I set down my fork. Consider the question.
What was I looking for? Escape? Redemption? Proof I could be something other than a monster?
“No,” I say finally. “I found something else.”
“What?” Cassius asks.
“Someone who made me want to be different.” My voice sounds hollow. “Then I lost her.”
The table goes quiet.
Laura slides in next to Varro and leans over. “The show premiers in two weeks. We’ll watch together if you want. Support you.”
“I have to watch it. Contract requires I watch and that I attend the reunion special.”
“We’ll all watch,” she says firmly. “See what you’ve been up to.”
See me fall in love. See me keep the truth from Reid. See everything fall apart.
I’m not sure I can watch that. But I nod anyway.
Dinner continues. The others slowly drift back to their own conversations. But they don’t leave. Don’t abandon me to sit alone at my usual solitary table.
It’s strange. Wrong. I don’t deserve their company.
But I don’t tell them to leave.
When I return to my cabin, my life tells a quiet tale. Bed made with military precision. Desk clean. Window overlooking dark trees.
I sit on the edge of the bed, and the loneliness crashes over me. It’s worse now.
Before Reid, I was alone, but I didn’t know what I was missing. Isolation was just… existence. Normal.
Now I know exactly what I’m missing. And it’s unbearable.
I walk to the window. Look out toward the main hall. Lights are still on. I can hear distant laughter. Life happening without me.
Can see it. But not be part of it. Maybe never will be.
But at least Reid’s father is safe. At least I did one thing right. Even if she never knows. Even if “maybe forever” becomes actually forever.
I close the curtains. Sit in darkness.
My phone is on the desk. Has been on the desk since my return from Scotland.
I know her number. Could compose a text in thirty seconds. Four words: I’m sorry. I’m here. Or just her name. Just: Reid. Let her decide what to do with it.
I pick up the phone. Set it down.
She said not to contact her. Not a text, not an email, nothing. She said she needed to figure it out without me in her ear. She meant it, and I knew she meant it, and I told her I wouldn’t.
That’s the only thing I can give her now that has any value—the one thing she asked for. Not flowers. Not explanations. Not the three hundred thousand dollars she doesn’t know about. Just silence, because she requested it, and keeping that promise is the only way I know how to love her from here.
I put the phone face down on the desk.
Leave it there.
Two weeks until the show begins to air. Not long after that Reid has to see me again at the reunion special.
Two weeks to figure out how to exist in the same room with her without falling apart.
I lie on the bed that’s too empty, in the cabin that’s too quiet, in the life that’s too hollow.
And I wait.
For the show to air.
For the reunion.
For the moment when I have to face her again and pretend I’m fine.
Pretend I’m not dying inside.
Pretend losing her didn’t destroy me.
I close my eyes.
Don’t sleep.
Just wait.
It’s all I know how to do anymore.