“She should be using them,” I muttered under my breath as I swung my legs over the side of the bed.
The bathroom light was off. The hallway was quiet.
“Belle.”
No answer.
A thread of unease tightened in my chest. I stepped into the hall.
And then I saw it.
The door that had not been opened in fifteen years. The sight of it hit like a physical blow.
Air left my lungs.
The hallway felt wrong. It tilted.
I was moving before I registered the decision. Every muscle in my body locked into something primal at the violation. I couldn’t handle the past cracking open without warning.
I reached the doorway, and there she was, standing in the nursery. The music box had gone silent now, but I could feel the echo of it in my bones. The crib stands exactly as it always has.
And Belle was standing in the center of it. She was barefoot, looking at everything with wide, stricken eyes.
Something detonated inside me. “What the fuck are you doing in here?”
She startled, turning toward me as confusion flashed across her face.
“I—” she began. “Raph, what is all of this?”
The question scraped against something raw and exposed. I don’t answer it.
The storm inside me surged up quick and violent. The memory of that room. The silence after. The years of keeping it sealed so I could function.
She stepped into it without asking, without understanding.
“Get out,” I growl, trying to control the anguish screaming in my head.
My voice was low now, but it shook with something dangerous.
Her eyes widened.
“I didn’t know.”
“How dare you come in here!”
“What is all this?”
“GET. OUT.” The words tear from me.
Her mouth fell open as she gawked at me.
“GET OUT!!” I raged at her.
She flinched like I'd struck her. I was lost. The fury was louder than the guilt.
She hesitated for half a second. Then she moved, slowly at first, then faster.
She slipped past me in the doorway, and the warm and familiar scent of her collided violently with the cold, preserved air of the nursery.
