CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT #3
His hands remain where they are—splayed against my ribs like he can feel every heartbeat ricocheting beneath them. His breath is still warm against my throat, his body still close enough that every inhale feels shared, like I can’t tell where he ends and I begin.
But something in the air shifts.
Not because I move.
Because I do.
“Montgomery—”
His name slips out before I can stop it, not as a thought, not as intention, but as interruption. A reflex. A fracture in whatever this is trying to become.
The moment breaks instantly.
The warmth, the closeness, the pressure of him against me—it all sharpens, changes shape, like I’ve dragged another presence into the space between us and made it real just by speaking it.
He pulls back just slightly—enough to look at me fully.
Not angry.
Not even surprised.
Just...knowing.
Like he’d expected this part all along.
“Still mumbling his name when you are with me, huh?” He murmurs, his voice low and unreadable.
I nod before I can stop myself. Shame tries to creep in behind it, wrapping around my ribs like a fresh pair of cuffs. “I don’t know how to…separate it,” I whisper.
“Him. You. What was real, what wasn’t.” My fingers curl against myself like I can physically hold the thoughts in place. “I don’t even know what I want anymore.”
A pause—smaller, more fragile.
“Well,” I correct quietly, voice thinning at the edges, “I do know what I want. I just don’t know how to ask for it.”
The admission hangs there, raw and unpolished, like I didn’t mean to say it out loud but couldn’t stop it once it started.
Shoomaker studies me for a long, slow second. His hands don’t leave my skin—but the pressure eases, shifting into something steadier, more grounding than restraining. His thumb drifts once beneath my ribs, like he’s anchoring me in place rather than holding me there.
“Ask and you shall receive, little survivor,” he says quietly. “All you have to do is tell me.”
My breath catches.
“But I don’t know how it will sound,” I admit, voice thinning at the edges. “How it will make me look.”
A pause. It feels too honest to take back.
“I want you both,” I say finally, forcing the words out even as my chest tightens around them. “I want the control you give me—you keep me grounded, you keep everything from falling apart inside me.”
My fingers curl slightly as I try to make sense of it while I’m saying it.
“But I want the softness Montgomery gives me too,” I add, quieter now. “That reminder that I’m…wanted. Not—” I swallow, correcting myself quickly, “—not that you don’t make me feel wanted, I just mean different. Safer. Less…sharp around the edges.”
My voice starts to shake.
“I want to be chosen,” I say, barely above a whisper. “And I want to be loved.”
A lone tear starts to fall.
“And I don’t want to have to choose,” I finish, the last words coming out smaller than I intended, like admitting them costs more than I have.
“You don’t have to know yet,” he says finally. “You don’t owe either of us a fucking decision tonight. Or tomorrow. Or ever.”
Tears prick my eyes, because I hadn’t expected that. I’d expected punishment. Demand. Not this quiet...grace.
“But don’t lie to yourself, Starling,” he adds, his voice rougher now, the edge creeping back in. “What happened between us—that wasn’t the Warden. That wasn’t about roles or missions or who has the tighter grip.”
His hand shifts—unhurried, careful in a way that feels almost restrained—gliding up the center of my chest. Over my heart. It is beating so fast I am sure he can feel it thundering against his palm.
“That all was real,” he says. “Whatever it was. And it sure as hell didn’t belong to Montgomery.”
I open my mouth, but no words come out. Just the sound of my breath catching on the jagged edge of everything I don’t know how to say.
“I’m not asking you to choose,” Shoomaker says quietly. “But don’t pretend this thing inside you isn’t burning for both of us.”
I stare at him. Wrecked and confused and needing. And even through it all, I nod.
Because he is right.
Montgomery had seen me in the dark.
But Shoomaker—he’d been the dark. And he still chose to hold me.
And maybe…just maybe…that meant he’d hold the broken parts too.
He leans in again—not for another kiss, not to resume what we’d started—but to press his forehead to mine. Just that.
Breath to breath.
Heartbeat to heartbeat.
“You’re allowed to want all of it,” he murmurs. “Even if it hurts.”
And God help me…I do.
The space between us softens, urgency giving way to something quieter. Something real.
Shoomaker wraps his arms around me—not to take, not to claim—but simply to hold. No agenda. No orders. Just warmth and presence.
And in that fragile silence, I let myself lean into him.
Not as a weapon.
Not as a mission.
But as a woman who, for the first time in far too long, needs to be held without being broken in the process.
Still, the truth sits heavy beneath my ribs.
This moment—this breath of calm—it won’t last.
The road ahead is jagged, and I’d be walking it with scars still bleeding. The choices waiting for me… the ghosts I have to face… none of it has changed.
And Montgomery?
He isn’t just a shadow in the past.
He is a storm on the horizon.
And somewhere inside me—beneath every bruise, beneath every breath—I still carry his lightning, too.