Chapter Twenty-Seven
HIS WORDS SAT heavy between us, like they’d sunk into the floorboards and weren’t ever leaving. You scare the hell outta me, too.
I hadn’t meant to say mine out loud, and now I didn’t know how to take it back. I just stood there, wrapped in the warmth of his hand on mine. Rough. Grounded. Steady. Not claiming, not pressing. Just holding on like he’d do it as long as I let him.
That was the part that scared me most.
What if I let him?
What if I let him in and he changed his mind?
What if I showed him all the jagged places I kept hidden and he looked at me differently?
What if he didn’t?
My throat went dry, my heart pounding so hard it felt like it might break skin. I could feel his breath, warm and slow, steady as a tide against the space between us. He didn’t move closer. Didn’t pull me in. He just… waited.
That felt dangerous.
“You didn’t have to come after me,” I whispered, my eyes fixed on his chest because I couldn’t stand to look at his face.
“I did,” he said softly.
I forced myself to lift my gaze, slow and unsure. The mistake was meeting his eyes, because there it was. Not hunger. Not pity. Something quieter. Something that whispered through my bones: you matter to me.
My breath caught, a tiny hiccup that betrayed me.
“I can’t give you what you want,” I said, my voice shaking. “Not yet.”
Zeke didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink. He just nodded slow, his thumb brushing my hand like a promise he wasn’t letting go unless I made him.
“I ain’t askin’ for all of you,” he said, eyes locked on mine. “Just askin’ you to stay.”
My eyes stung. I shut them before he could see too far inside. God, I wanted to stay. Wanted it so bad it hurt. But want and trust weren’t the same thing. I’d trusted before. And I’d burned for it.
When I opened them again, he was still there. Still looking at me like I was something worth keeping, even cracked and dented.
I eased my hand from his. Not to push him away. Just to breathe. “I’m not running,” I whispered. “But I’m not jumping either.”
His lips curved, just a hint of a smile, tired and sad, but real. “I can wait ‘til you do.”
I stepped back, just enough to steady myself. The space between us hummed with everything unsaid.
“I should check on the children,” I murmured.
“Yeah,” he murmured, his eyes never leaving mine. “I gotta get back to work. I’ll be back come mornin’. Hunter is keepin’ watch outside so don’t get spooked if you see him.”
I reached for the door. Before I opened it, his voice stopped me cold.
“I meant every damn word tonight, Sable.”
***
THE WEIGHT OF it followed me, heavier than the silence.
I shut the bedroom door behind me gently, the kids still asleep, the house wrapped in that kind of stillness most people would call peaceful.
But peace was a sound I didn’t trust.
Not when silence had been the sharpest weapon in Gabrial’s arsenal.
I leaned against the door, arms wound tight across my chest, trying to breathe through the storm Zeke had stirred in me. He hadn’t done anything wrong—not really—but wanting to believe him scared me more than anything else had in a long time.
Gabrial used to be soft at first, too, gentle with his words and touches. I closed my eyes willing the memories away, but they came anyway.
He made me wear white that night.
Not ivory or cream—white. Like snow, like purity, like something he owned and didn’t want anyone else to even breathe close.
The dress dragged along the marble floors of the compound’s great hall, the hem snagging on the sharp corners. I hadn’t chosen it. Gabrial had it laid out on the bed with a note in his handwriting: Put it on. Fix your hair the way I like.
I always fixed it the way he liked.
There was a dinner planned. A gathering at The Children of the Flame compound. His “faithful” had come to listen, to praise, to obey, and I was expected to be there, silent and lovely, a symbol of his vision. But not a person. Never that.
“You’re not to speak tonight,” he said, just before the doors opened. “If anyone speaks to you, look at me. I’ll decide if they deserve your voice.”
I nodded because I had no choice.
The guards bowed their heads when they walked past me. They were trained—trained to keep their eyes low, their words few. No one was allowed to look directly at me unless Gabrial gave permission. He said my face was his, my presence a privilege no one else had earned.
But one man slipped.
He was new. Barely old enough to shave. He looked up as we passed, just for a second.
Gabrial noticed.
That night, after the others had gone, he poured himself a drink with the kind of slow, terrifying calm that always came before the storm. I stood by the fireplace, the dress still clinging to my skin like a noose. He didn't say a word for a long time.
Then he set the glass down. Walked over.
“Did you enjoy the attention?” he asked quietly, brushing his knuckles down my cheek like a lover, except it wasn’t affection. It was possession.
“No,” I whispered.
“Then why’d you let him look at you?” His voice didn’t rise, but his hand did, closing around my jaw hard enough to still my breath. “You think I didn’t see it? You basked in it.”
“I didn’t—” I tried to explain, but he squeezed tighter.
“You are mine,” he said, eyes gleaming with something that looked like love but burned like hatred. “Everything you are belongs to me. There is no part of you the world gets to share.”
I couldn’t cry. Not then. Not in front of him.
I just nodded and apologized and waited until he was done convincing me how lucky I was to be protected by a love so fierce it bled.
Now, standing in a warm, quiet room that smelled like clean laundry and old wood, I wrapped my arms tighter around myself and tried to remember where I was. Who I was.
Zeke had touched my hand and asked nothing in return.
He didn’t ask for my obedience. Didn’t ask for control. He didn’t tell me what to wear, where to stand, or how to smile.
He just stood there, offering something soft when I’d only ever known hard edges, and maybe that’s what scared me most of all, because softness can make you believe again, and belief gets you hurt.
But God help me... I was starting to believe anyway.