Page 109 of Safe Word

‘Shit,’ I muttered, sat straighter, ‘sorry.’ My eyes dropped to the bottle in my hands. Smooth. Really smooth.

‘It’s fine.’ His voice was rough, but not unpleasant. He stared at his knuckles like they might rewrite the past. ‘She was good. Proper. Mass every Sunday with Vinnie’s folks, lasagne every Wednesday. She used to tuck tissues into the pocket of my jacket when I was little – just in case.’

He moved, dug into his coat and pulled out a pack. Sealed. Clean.

My heart lurched at that.

I grinned.

Like a goddamn teenager at the climax of a chick flick.

‘That’s real cute,’ I said teasingly.

He grimaced at the word, but a ghost of a grin betrayed him. It dulled the severity of the moment.

‘Is she in the States?’ I asked, a little gentler.

His brows drew low again, shadow bleeding into the brown of his eyes like clouds over water.

‘I don’t know,’ he said eventually. The words came quietly, carefully, as if they’d been kept in the back of his throat for years.

‘I was nineteen. After my father… had an episode,’ he started, tripping over the phrase as though he wasn’t sure how to call it. ‘She told me to run. I crashed at Vinnie’s that night. When I came back the next morning… she was gone. Just gone. Her clothes were gone too.’

My breath stilled. A cavernous silence opened between us. I didn’t speak, the thought clawing its way up my throat – the one we were both thinking: was she still alive?

His gaze shifted to me, quiet and questioning. I didn’t look away. I understood him more than he thought I did. When someone told you things like this, you didn’t smother it with sympathy. So I gave him space. And the certainty that I wasn’t just listening – I heard him.

‘Did you try to find her?’ I asked instead.

He inclined his head. No words. Just that one small motion.

We let the silence stretch. The bassline of the club pulsed around us, trying to drown out the memory, but it couldn’t quite reach the darker corners.

I wet my lips.

It was brave, I thought. Brave to leave. To escape. To choose survival – if that was what had really happened. But also – she had left him. A boy still tethered to the wreckage.

Even if he had been nearly a man, he was still just a kid in the middle of something terrible.

And maybe that was why the ache in my chest twisted strange, half with admiration, half something darker.

That was also why it sat so heavy. The idea of running.

Because it had taken me a while too. I’d stayed too long. Let it break me, piece by piece. And I’d called it love.

God, I couldn’t even imagine having to be connected to Travis forever, sharing a child with him. What a terrible fate to bestow upon a young soul.

The thought turned my stomach.

But now… there was one shadow and one man circling the edges of my life, pulling at threads I had barely begun to untangle.

Ghost and Cain – two names, two bodies – but just one truth, even if it wore both faces.

Ghost was a whisper of danger, faceless and untouchable. He existed in shadows and sex, in the spaces I wasn’t allowed to desire. He was forbidden. But worse… he felt familiar. As if I hadn’t let him in, because he was the darkness that had already been inside me.

Cain… he was different. Real. But the pull was the same. Not just lust or curiosity. It felt older than either of us.

My boss, the man I had spent the last few days working beside, laughing with, sharing pieces of myself I hadn’t even intended to share. He was solid, flesh and blood, as real as the beat of my heart or the air in my lungs. He was flawed and complicated, worn around the edges in a way that reflected my own brokenness. And somehow, that made him more dangerous than Ghost ever could be.