Chapter 36
I couldn’t sleep.
I closed my eyes, yeah, lay there still, breathing slow enough that anyone watching would’ve thought I’d drifted off, but my head wouldn’t shut the fuck up. It just kept going. Looping. Pulling threads I didn’t even know were still there and yanking them until everything inside me felt frayed.
By the time the light started bleeding through the curtains, I already knew. There was nothing left to figure out, no decision left hanging.
I was done.
No shaking hands, no last-minute bargaining with something bigger than me, just a point where continuing feels unnecessary.
I stared at the ceiling for a long time before I sat up, elbows resting on my knees, hands hanging loose between them.
My fingers still felt damp from the night before, skin tight, like something had been washed off me that wasn’t supposed to come back, and it didn’t.
You’re listening, right, little Ghost?
And don’t you dare give me that look. This isn’t the part where you try to save me, this is the part where you understand me. Because I thought about it properly this time. Not just the act, not just the end of it, but everything around it. What would happen if I didn’t. If I stayed, if I tried.
My father.
The word still felt strange sitting in my head, like something that didn’t belong to me.
I rolled it around anyway, testing it, seeing if it would settle.
I could go back. Knock on that door again.
Let him look at me like I was something he’d been missing his entire life.
Let him build something out of what little was left of me and call it a second chance. I could let him try. But then what?
What happens when he starts asking questions I can’t answer without breaking something?
What happens when he looks at me and finally sees it?
Not the version of me he lost, but the version of me that came back.
The parts that don’t sit right. The things I’ve done.
The way my head works when it’s quiet, the way it doesn’t stop even when it should.
You think he could hold that? You think he’d still look at me the same?
I didn’t.
And even if he did, if he somehow managed to swallow it, to accept it, to keep me anyway, Zwierek wouldn’t.
That’s the part that doesn’t bend. I could see it so clearly it almost made me laugh.
Me, standing in that house again, pretending I could have something normal, pretending I could keep it separate. And then Zwierek showing up.
Fucking inevitable.
He wouldn’t even have to do anything. Just being there would be enough.
Enough to turn everything sour. Enough to make it all unsafe.
Enough to remind me exactly what I am and where I belong.
And my father, no. I wouldn’t do that to him.
I wouldn’t drag him into something he never asked for just because I was too selfish to let go.
You see the problem, don’t you? There isn’t a version of this where it works. Not one. So what’s left?
Zwierek, of course. It always circles back to him.
I leaned back again, pressing my head into the wall behind me, eyes drifting shut for a second before opening again.
The room felt smaller that day. Like it was closing in slowly and no one else could see it.
I let my thoughts go there, and didn't stop them this time.
What would I have been without him?
Not better, let’s not try to twist it into something prettier, but different. I tried to picture it. A version of me that never met him, that never got pulled into all of this.
Would I have stayed quiet?
Stayed small?
Another kid that slipped through the cracks and learned how to exist without ever really being seen?
Maybe.
Maybe I would’ve disappeared in a different way.
Less noticeable. Or maybe I would’ve found something else.
Someone else. I don’t know. That’s the thing.
I don’t fucking know. Because every path I try to imagine bends back to him eventually, like he was always going to be there no matter what direction I took.
Like he wasn’t something that happened to me.
Like he was something that was always waiting. That thought sat wrong. So wrong.
I rubbed my hands over my face, dragging them down slowly, fingers catching against my skin.
No. That’s not true. It can’t be. Because if it is, then none of this was avoidable.
And I don’t want to believe that. I don’t want to believe I never had a chance.
So I pushed it the other way. Forced it. Looked at it from a different angle.
What if he didn’t find me?
What if I never met him?
The images shifted, changed. Got uglier in a different way, but they weren’t this.
They weren’t him. And that’s when it started.
Small, a thought I didn’t correct. It wasn’t just the things he did, it was everything around it.
Every time he stepped in, every time he decided something for me, every time he said it was for my own good, every time I let him.
My jaw tightened so hard my teeth hurt, my fingers curled into my palms. Because if I really looked at it, it didn’t feel like something that just happened.
It felt shaped. Guided even, pushed. Like I’d been nudged, again and again, into becoming exactly what I had become.
And him standing there the whole time, watching it happen.
Encouraging it. Calling it something else, calling it necessary. Calling it the right thing.
My chest tightened with something sharp and hot, like a blade from a knife but on fire.
I sat up straighter, my shoulders pulling back, my spine stiff.
Because if that’s true, if even a part of that is true, then this isn’t just on me.
And I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know where to put it.
Because it doesn’t make anything better, it just changes who I aim it at.
My tongue pressed against the inside of my cheek, hard enough to ground me for a second.
Zwierek.
The name sat heavier then and I couldn’t tell if that made it easier or worse.
Probably worse. It’s always worse when things start to make sense.
I couldn’t stay in that room. If I did, I would’ve sunk deeper into it and I could already feel how easy it would be to just…
stop there. Let the thoughts finish what they started.
Let them close in and do the rest for me.
But no, not yet, there was still something unfinished. You remember, don’t you, little Ghost?
That feeling right before everything snaps.
Not the breaking itself, no, that part comes fast, but the seconds before.
Where something inside you tightens so much you almost expect to hear it crack.
That’s where I was. I pushed myself up, joints stiff, body lagging a second behind what my head had already decided.
My feet hit the floor and I just stood there for a moment, staring at nothing, letting that tightness build instead of pushing it down this time.
Then I moved, tossed on some clothes I had lying on the floor and put on my boots, then out to the hallway.
It felt colder than it had before, or maybe I just noticed it more because my body was on fire.
My shoulder brushed lightly against the wall as I walked, fingertips grazing along the surface without thinking, like I needed something solid to anchor myself to.
I stepped into the living room and stopped.
Zwierek was there.
Back half turned to me, crouched slightly over the table, hands moving with a kind of calm that didn’t match anything else in the room.
There was a bag open in front of him, dark, worn, already half filled.
I didn’t say anything at first, I just observed.
Watched his hands, the way he moved. A coil of rope disappeared into the bag, placed, like it had a purpose already decided.
Something metallic followed, then something else I didn’t immediately recognize, but I didn’t need to.
I knew the pattern, I knew what that was.
“What are you doing?” My voice came out lower than I expected. Zwierek didn’t turn, didn’t even pause. His hand kept moving, adjusting something inside the bag before he spoke, tone flat, almost bored.
“Going out to finish what you apparently couldn’t.” Something deep in my spine twisted, slow and ugly. I took a step further into the room.
“Are you going to my father?” This time he didn’t answer immediately. He zipped part of the bag closed, tested it with a short tug.
“Yeah.” Just that. Yeah. Like it was nothing, like it didn’t matter. My hands curled into fists at my sides.
“You don’t get to do that.” My voice came out harsher, no longer controlled. “That’s my father, not yours, Zwierek. There’s nothing to finish, no revenge to take and even if there was, it wouldn’t be yours to take.”
He stopped, finally. The bag hit the table, hard.
The sound cracked through the room, loud enough to make something in my chest jolt in response.
Zwierek’s hands stayed on it for a second, fingers spread against the fabric, knuckles pale where the pressure built.
Then he straightened slightly and looked at me, really looked this time.
There wasn’t anything casual left in his face.
No distance, it was all there now, every bit of it.
Bare, unhidden. And it wasn’t just anger, it was worse than that, because anger burns out and this didn’t feel like it would.
My pulse kicked harder against my ribs, but I didn’t move, didn’t step back, didn’t break the space between us. I let it come, finally fucking come.
“Not yours to take?” He let out something between a laugh and a breath, but there was nothing amused in it. Nothing human, almost. “I fucking made you.” The words dragged, heavy but welcomed.