Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
UNTIL SOMETHING SOFT GROWS BACK
LOUISIANA
We ride to the school in silence. Henry’s over there with that smug-ass look on his face, like he didn’t just rearrange my entire life. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here stewing—because I let this man fold me like a God damn deck chair and try to eat the bottom out of me.
Big, dominant, pushy, motherfucker.
When I got back from dropping Dallas off at school, something kept tugging me toward that damned sketchbook. But just as strong as the pull was whatever kept holding me back.
By the third trip into the dresser—just standing there, staring at it like it might jump off the shelf—I let out a growl of frustration and stormed out, headed straight for the bakery.
I walk in and call for Sophie but she doesn’t answer and after heading back into the kitchen I find her talking in a hushed tone on the phone. She sees me, pales, and ends the call.
“What the hell was that about?” I demand, tension already coiled tight in my gut.
She takes her glasses off and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Nothing,” she says a little too quickly. “ Just someone calling to cancel their order.”
I loop my arm around her shoulders. “People fucking suck.”
She gives me a smile that doesn’t quite meet her eyes. “Yeah, they do.”
She slides her glasses back on, and for a second I almost press—almost ask who it really was, what that look was about. But I let it go.
“How are you holding up?” she asks instead, shifting the weight off herself and placing it gently back on me.
I could give my sister the superficial answer, but I know she’d fucking see right through it.
“Where do you want me to start? With the fact he broke into daddy’s office for my sketchbook or where he strung me up like a wild animal and didn’t fuck me, but made me come?”
Sophie stands there a full second or two resembling a fish out of water before speaking, “That didn’t take long.”
I drag in a deep breath, letting the smell of vanilla and butter wrap around me like a comfort I don’t deserve, then climb up onto the stainless steel counter and plant my ass there like I belong. “I think we all knew it wouldn’t.”
She studies me for a long, quiet beat. That kind of sister stare that strips the armor clean off. Then finally, softly, “So, your sketchbook?”
“Yeah,” I whisper.
She waits, giving me room to unpack what I’m really feeling. I swallow hard. “My fingers itch to draw, to spill out this God damn clusterfuck of feelings swirling inside me. But mostly…it just rips open the hole Daddy left, and I miss him like hell.”
I wipe the tears off my face on the back of my hand. Yeah, we might’ve had the world’s shittiest mother—but damn if Murphy Wright didn’t make up for it by being the best damn dad the world ever saw.
She meets my eyes, voice cracking like it’s carrying its own weight. “Do you know…I used to just sit there, watching you two draw, and I’d be so damn jealous? Not because you had some crazy talent, but because I wanted that. I wanted something real like that with him.”
Sophie lets out a breath of a laugh, more sadness than humor. “One time, he caught me tearing up one of your sketchbooks—just ripping page after page, sobbing so hard I could barely see. I was so sure he’d be mad.”
She pauses, eyes glassy, voice barely hanging on. “But he didn’t say anything. Just sat down beside me, quiet and steady, like he could carry the silence for me. Waited until I’d worn myself out. Then he asked, ‘Do you feel better, baby girl?’”
Her laugh is soft and shaky. “And I cried harder, because of course I didn’t. But he—” Her voice catches.
Sophie wipes her face with the sleeve of her shirt. “He just pulled me in and said, ‘We don’t have to fix it right now, baby girl. Sometimes we just breathe through the wreckage ‘til—’”
“Something soft grows back,” I finish, and my arms wrap around my middle like I’m trying to hold something in.
Or keep something from spilling out. The ache swells so big in my chest it steals the breath right out of me.
For a second, I swear I can feel him—just the shape of his love, the way it used to wrap around us when the world got too heavy.
“I think you’ve used Daddy’s death like a shield—to push anything good or real out of your life.
And after the hysterectomy, you wrapped yourself tighter in that pain, letting it root you deep in this infestation of hurt and that twisted lie that you’re not enough.
I’ll never truly understand what it’s like to lose the chance to have kids…
I can’t even begin to imagine how deep that cuts. ”
She reaches out, her hand finding mine, fingers curling around like a lifeline.
“But maybe…finally sketching again will help you face that clusterfuck of feelings—because hope doesn’t come easy.
It takes root slowly, fragile as hell. But if you let it, maybe something softer can grow from all this self-inflicted destruction. ”
The words hit me harder than I expect, sinking deep into the parts I’ve tried to bury. My throat tightens, and I can barely whisper, “I’m scared. Scared if I let it all out, there won’t be anything left. Just…emptiness.”
My eyes don’t meet hers when I add, quieter still, “None of this is real, Soph. Not really. We’re just playing house.”
Sophie snaps back without missing a beat, “Then you my sister are a damn idiot.” She leans in, eyes blazing, “It’s not emptiness.
It just feels that way when everything inside you is too heavy to move.
And don’t try to kid yourself, nothing going on in those four walls is pretend. Not one fucking thing.”
Well, fuck me.
I scoff, the bitterness rising like second nature. “So what—you want me to fall apart, bleed it all out, and then what? Sketch my way back to being whole? While also accepting that all this is for keeps?” I laugh, sharp and hollow. “Yeah, okay.”
“Yeah, fool, I want you to do exactly that,” Sophie shoots back, a wicked grin tugging at her lips, “and then you start catching up on ten years’ worth of missed orgasms.”
And there it is—her signature move. That sugarcoated jab, all warmth and wit, but sharp enough to draw blood if you’re not braced for it.
People look at Sophie and see softness. See her tucked away in her cozy little bakery like she’s made of flour and honey, like life hasn’t ever touched her rough.
But that’s just her armor. She doesn’t hide in the kitchen because it’s peaceful—she hides there because it’s the one place she can control the chaos.
The one place no one asks what she’s really holding together.
She’s got the same fire in her that I do. The difference is, she covers hers in vanilla and fresh bread. I let mine scorch everything it touches.
“Do you want the details?” I ask, wiggling my eyebrows just to push her buttons.
A full body shudder rolls through her. “Absolutely not, and if you try to give me any graphic details, I swear to God, I’m shoving you in the fucking oven.”
“I’m your sister Sophie, we should be able to talk about these things.” I smirk.
She crosses her arms, voice firm. “If it were anybody else? Hell yeah, we’d talk about it. But it’s not. So we’re not.”
“You know if this were Aunt Joe, we’d be able to talk about it,” I argue, crossing my arms under my chest. Because Aunt Joe is 100 percent a big old freak nasty. Just last week she told Lucien how’d she slide down his pole for the change in his pocket, that big bastard was stunned silent.
Sophie grins wickedly at me. “Okay, so you do want to hear about how she caught Maddox in the cooler with Evie spread-eagle while he stocked her shelf?”
I wrinkle my nose. “I think I just threw up in my mouth.”
“Exactly!” she says, hopping off the counter. “Now get your tall ass over here and help me reach the extra cake boxes you shoved on top of the fridge.”
I groan, reaching up to grab the cake boxes perched on the fridge. “You really use me as your personal ladder, huh?”
She grins, folding her arms. “Tall, strong, and always available. You’re a natural.”
I shift the boxes carefully in my hands, feeling the weight—not just of the boxes, but everything we carry. “One of these days, I’m charging you for all this heavy lifting.”
She steps closer, her smile softening. “Maybe, but I’d still call you my rock—even when you’re tired.”
For a second, the teasing fades, and I catch the quiet strength between us—something steady and real beneath the noise.
“I love you, Fi.”
“Love you most, Lou.”
Now, I won’t say that conversation with my sister is why I ended up being devoured like an all-you-can-eat buffet after Sunday service, but I will say I left there, went straight back to Henry’s, and without thinking, snatched my sketchbook up and planted my ass at the kitchen table. Then I just let my fingers go.
At first, I tried to will myself to create certain images—ones I’ve drawn a million times before, like Sophie or Maggie.
But Dallas kept creeping into my mind, pulling me away from the familiar.
Before long, I was staring at him just like he sat in that barber chair earlier this week—like it was the most boring thing he’d ever endured.
There’s something about the way Dallas sits—half-bored, half-worn down—that pulls at something inside me. I traced the lines of his face slowly, trying to hold on to every detail. The silence he carries isn’t empty—it’s heavy, almost too much to carry.
Sophie’s words echoed softly in my mind—breathing through the wreckage until something soft grew back. But beneath it all, a quiet doubt lingered—am I enough for that?
Still, in that moment, maybe he is that something soft. And maybe, just maybe, I’m beginning to hope I can be too.
I don’t know how long I sat there drawing or what all I had sketched until Henry’s rich voice pulled me back from wherever I’d wandered off to.
I could have shut him out when he demanded to know why I kept myself always on the outside, looking in.
But Sophie was right—I needed to fall apart and bleed it out.
Maybe I could start by being honest with the one person I’d wanted my entire life, even if the truths I had to offer were small.
It was still far more than I had let myself give him in all these years—more than the walls I’d built, more than the silence I’d wrapped around my heart. And as he devoured me on his kitchen table, he fucking knew it too.