I felt her shift against me, felt her hand move up to rest against my jaw.
“Because I’m broken,” I whispered. “I’ve been broken since I was a kid watching my mother kill herself for men who didn’t give a shit. And I don’t know how to be anything else.”
The silence that followed was absolute. Alex didn’t say anything. Didn’t offer comfort or judgment, or anything at all. She just lay there against me, her hand warm against my face, her breathing steady and even. And somehow, that was exactly what I needed. Not words. Not platitudes. Just... presence. Just someone who’d heard the worst parts of me and hadn’t run away.
I turned my head slightly, pressing my lips against her forehead.
Not a kiss, exactly. Just... contact. Connection.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “For what I’ve done to you. For what I’m going to keep doing to you. For being exactly what I am.”
Her fingers moved slightly against my jaw, a gentle pressure that might have been forgiveness or might have been something else entirely.
“I can’t change,” I continued. “I can’t be the man you probably wish I was. I can’t be gentle or kind or normal. This is all I know how to be.”
I felt her breath against my skin, warm and steady. “But I can promise you this,” I said, my voice rough. “I’ll never lie to you about what I am. I’ll never pretend to be something I’m not. And I’ll never,everlet anyone else hurt you. You’re mine now. Completely. And that means I protect what’s mine. Even if what you need protection from is me.”
Alex shifted slightly, her face turning up toward mine. I still couldn’t see her expression in the darkness, but I felt her breath against my lips.
“Say something,” I said quietly. “Tell me I’m a monster. Tell me you hate me. Tell me something.”
But she didn’t. She just pressed closer, her body molding against mine, her hand still resting against my jaw. And in the silence, in the darkness, in the space between confession and absolution, I felt something shift. Not forgiveness. Not understanding. Not even acceptance. Just... acknowledgment. She heard me. She listened to every dark, twisted, broken part of me. And she was still here. Still pressed against me. Still holding on. And for the first time in my life, I wondered if maybe being broken didn’t mean being alone.
I held her tighter, my face buried in her hair, breathing in the scent of her. Soap and skin and something uniquelyher. Something that had become as necessary to me as air.
“Thank you,” I whispered against her hair. “For listening. For not running. For still being here.”
Her fingers moved slightly against my jaw, a gentle caress that felt like an answer as we lay there in the darkness, two broken things holding onto each other, neither of us knowing if this was salvation or damnation. But knowing, somehow, that it didn’t matter. Because we were in it together now.
For better or worse.
Until the end.
Chapter Thirty
Alex
The silence stretched between us, heavy with the weight of everything he had just confessed. His breathing had evened out against my hair, his hand still moving through it in slow, rhythmic strokes that felt almost meditative. I should have said something. Should have offered comfort or understanding, orsomething. But the words stuck in my throat, tangled up with my own memories, my own broken pieces.
Because I understood him.
God help me, I understood exactly what he was talking about. The desperate need to be anything other than what I feared becoming. The terror of vulnerability. The way control became the only thing standing between me and complete annihilation.
“I was six,” I heard myself say, my voice barely above a whisper.
His hand stilled in my hair.
“When my parents died. I was six years old.”
I feel him shift slightly, his body tensing against mine, but he didn’t pull away. Didn’t interrupt. Just... listened. The way I listened to him. “It was a club-related ambush,” I continued, staring at the shadows on the ceiling. “Some rival MC. I don’t even remember which one anymore. They caught my parents on the highway between Athens and Dallas. Shot them both. Left them bleeding out on the side of the road.”
My throat tightened, but I forced the words out anyway.
“Oscar was fourteen. Old enough to understand what had happened. Old enough to be angry about it. But not old enough to know what the fuck to do with a six-year-old sister who kept asking when Mommy and Daddy were coming home.”
Nano’s hand started moving through my hair again, slower this time. Gentler.
“Kronos took us in. The entire club did, really. But it was Oscar who raised me. Oscar who made sure I ate breakfast before school. Oscar who helped me with homework. Oscar who sat up with me when I had nightmares about the blood on the highway.”
