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“Can I…can I have my friend back for a second?” I say thickly, my emotions already fraying.

“Of course.” I hear fabric whisper against fabric as he turns toward me, feel the couch dip as he shifts closer, his knee mere inches from my own.

Here goes…

“Leo cheated on me.” Band-aid, off.

Tension ripples through the room as Sunday goes still. The flare of his energy is so palpable I swear I see a black aura out of the corner of my eye, but it disappears when I look at him.

“Your husband cheated on you?” he grits out.

I nod, flexing my jaw in a bid to stop myself from crying.

“It… Our marriage was great, in the beginning. What everyone dreams of. But he started getting…” I trail off, struggling to find the words. He wasn’t abusive, not in the textbook sense. It might’ve turned that way, had I stayed. “…I guess he just got bored of me. He started going on all these business trips and I⁠—”

I suck in a violent breath, steeling myself. Sunday’s hand finds my knee, and it gives me a little strength to keep going.

“I shouldn’t have snooped. But I found messages and photos. There were at least two people, but I couldn’t stomach looking through the rest of it.”

I look at him, directly in the eye, finding something there I haven’t seen in years. Protectiveness.

It pushes the first tear out of the corner of my eye. I feel it roll down my cheek, but before it drops, he swipes it away with a tattooed knuckle.

“We argued a lot after that. He told me I wasn’t giving him enough. I tried to leave once, but he changed his behavior just enough to keep me naive. I didn’t realize a leash had been slipped around my neck until it cinched tight.”

Sunday remains quiet, so I press on.

“I gave him everything. Even when I didn’t want to. Even when I said no at first, I gave in because I thought that it would keep him happy and that h-he’d start lov—” I choke, losing my battle with my emotions, barely hanging onto the weak dam holding back the rest of my tears.

“Jesus, Bellamy. I’m so sorry he did that to you. What a fucking scumbag.” Sunday’s voice is unbearably soft, his fingers flexing into my jeans.

I can’t.

I can’t hold it anymore.

“What is wrong with me, Sunday? Why does nobody want me?” I shatter, my voice along with it. Tears stream down my face, splashing onto my collarbone, burning me. “Three different foster families didn’t want me. You didn’t, my husband didn’t. Why am I not enough?”

I can’t see through the veil of water cascading out of my eyes, but I hear him shifting, feel his hands on me, and then he’s pulling me into him. I go willingly, even though it hurts so much I feel like I’m being cleaved in two. I cry harder when his arms become a soothing cage across my back, tucking me underneath his chin as I sob into his neck.

Why does this keep happening to me? Why do all the people who swear to love me, care for me, protect me, end up fucking leaving me?

Sunday’s hand winds through my hair, playing with the strands as he rocks me gently, his arms tightening around me as his words caress the shell of my ear. “It’s okay, baby. Let it out. Let it all the way out.”

Baby. My world splinters further at the word. I loathe it and love it in equal measure.

“Breathe,” Sunday reminds me, his thumb dragging soothing motions across the bare skin of my lower back. “Breathe through it.”

I try. I try and try and try, until I just about manage it. The gentle rocking continues until my lungs remember how to work again, the pain ebbing to a duller ache.

I peel my face off his neck, cringing at the dampness my tears leave behind. Our eyes find each other, the sadness in his gutting me anew as his gaze searches my face.

And they find me, after all this time.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Sunday

Ididn’t know I had much of a heart left to break.