31. Vera #2
“I was ashamed.” The words come out before I can dress them up. “These needs I have — they felt wrong. Too much. Not normal.” I press my hands flat against the table. “I was terrified of being judged.”
“By me?”
The question lands softly. Not hurt, not accusatory. Genuinely asking.
“By everyone.” My eyes sting. “But especially you. You’re the person whose opinion matters most to me. You have been for nine years.” I look at her directly even though it costs me. “And I was so scared you’d think I was broken.”
“Stop.” Her voice is firm. “I would never think that.”
“I know that now.”
“You should have known it then.”
“I know.” I wipe my eyes. “I was going to tell you. After I understood what it meant for me. But then Kane walked in that night and everything became so much more complicated.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then: “Kane goes to a BDSM club.”
“Yes.”
She blinks. Sets her cup down. “My brother.”
“Yes.”
A beat. She absorbs it. Then she exhales.
“I’m going to need some time with the image of my brother at a BDSM club.
” A breath. “There are questions. I’m not asking them today.
” She meets my eyes. “I’m not judging either of you for it.
Eclipse, what you need, what he needs — that’s yours and his.
” She sets her cup down. “But the lying about Kane — that’s what I’m sitting here for. ”
“I know.”
She looks at me for a long moment. “You decided for me.” Her voice gets sharper. “You decided I couldn’t handle it. You took away my choice.”
“Yes.”
“We’ve been through everything together. Bad breakups, career disasters, family drama. And you didn’t trust me.” Tears spill down her cheeks. “That’s what hurt the most. Not Kane. Not even the lying, really. That you looked at me and decided I couldn’t handle the truth.”
“You’re right,” I whisper. “I’m sorry.”
She looks at her cup. Then back up.
“I keep waiting for this to go the way Sidney went,” she says quietly.
I don’t rush to reassure her.
“I know that’s what you’re waiting for. I can’t promise you easy.
But I can tell you the difference between me and Sidney.
” I hold her gaze. “After Kane, she couldn’t look at you without seeing him.
So she let go of both. I am not going to do that to you.
You are not the casualty in this story, Sloane.
You are the person we were both most afraid of hurting. ”
She’s quiet. Then: “Are you sorry you fell for my brother? Or sorry I found out?”
“I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry I hurt you, and I’m sorry I didn’t trust you enough to be honest.” I hold her gaze. “But I’m not sorry I fell in love with him.”
She flinches and looks away.
“Even knowing what it could do to us?”
“Even then.”
Silence. Long enough that I can hear the coffee machine behind the bar and someone’s conversation two tables away.
She doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Just sits there with her hands around her cup.
Then: “Is this actually love? Or are you both caught up in something?”
“I knew it was real because of you. Because the thought of losing you over it — that’s what broke me. You don’t grieve like that over something that isn’t love.”
She absorbs that. Then she’s crying.
“I can’t lose you the way I lost Sidney.” Her voice goes raw. “I can’t do that again.”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” I take her hand. This time she lets me. “Because I’m not Sidney. I’m not going anywhere, Sloane. I’ll fight for this — for you, for us — for as long as it takes.”
She doesn’t say anything. Just sits there crying, her hand in mine, not pulling away.
Which is more than I let myself hope for.
“Both permanent,” she says finally.
“Yes. You and me. Him and me. Both. Non-negotiable.”
“Even if I’m weird about it for a while?” Her voice is steadier now but the fear underneath it is still there. “Even if I need time before I can be in the same room as both of you without wanting to scream?”
“Even then.” I tighten my grip. “You’re stuck with me, Sloane.”
Something cracks open in her face. A laugh comes through the tears — small, broken, entirely real.
“I missed you,” she says.
“I missed you too.” My throat tightens. “Every single day.”
We sit there with our hands linked across the table, both of us crying, the coffee gone cold between us, the noise of the street carrying on outside like none of this is happening.
After a while she takes a breath. Steadies.
“No more secrets,” she says. “About anything. Ever.”
“No more secrets. I promise.”
She nods. Then slowly, like she’s not quite ready but she is, she pulls her hand back.
“We’re not okay yet,” she says. “But we’re getting there.”
“I’ll take getting there.”
She wipes her face. Takes a sip of cold coffee and grimaces.
For one small second it’s almost normal.
We both stand. Face each other across the table, neither of us moving, and I don’t reach for her because it has to be her choice, it has to come from her.
Then she opens her arms. Hesitant. Uncertain.
I step into them carefully, not presuming too much, and she holds me — not as tight as she used to, not yet, but she holds on, and I press my face into her shoulder and let myself feel the full weight of what it means that she’s doing this at all.
“I love you,” I whisper.
Silence. Just long enough that I feel it.
Then: “I love you too, you weirdo.”
When we pull apart we’re both crying again. She looks at me with her red eyes and her ruined mascara and shakes her head slightly, like I’m a problem she’s chosen to keep.
“The BDSM thing.” She points at me. “We’re talking about that eventually. I have questions.”
Despite everything — despite all of it — I laugh. “Okay.”
“Not today.” She glances around the small coffee shop, the cold cups, the used napkins, all the evidence of what today cost. “Today we just—” She stops. Can’t find the word.
“Today was enough,” I say.
She looks at me for a moment. Nods.
Small smile. Tentative. Real.
Then she’s gone, and I stand beside the table and watch the door close behind her, and I don’t move for a long moment, just breathing, just feeling the shape of what just happened settle into something I can carry.
I take out my phone.
Getting there, I type to Kane.
Three dots appear immediately.
Then: That’s everything.
I put the phone in my pocket, leave a tip I probably can’t afford, and walk back out into the city.