Page 39

NINETEEN

F allon

The water scalds my skin. I don’t turn it down.

It pounds over my head like maybe, if it burns enough, it’ll strip off everything I’m feeling. The blood. The dirt. The death. The helplessness. Maybe if I let it scald me long enough, I’ll wash away all the bad memories.

Instead, I’m overflowing with them.

Not with water.

Not even with pain.

With grief so consuming it feels like I’ll never breathe again, like it’s punched a hole straight through my chest and left it there, gaping and raw.

A wound that’ll never scab over because it isn’t just grief .

It’s shame. It’s guilt. It’s too much all at once, and I don’t know where to put any of it.

I thought I knew what hate was. I thought I knew what she was.

For years, I hated my mother for abandoning us.

For leaving me behind. For vanishing into the night and taking the best parts of my father with her.

I blamed her for everything , for Emma’s health, for Dad’s quiet sorrow, for every sleepless night where I wondered why I wasn’t enough to make her stay.

And none of it was true.

None of it.

She didn’t abandon me. She saved me. She saved all of us. And now she’s gone, and I don’t know what to do with the hatred that’s still burning in my chest like an old fire that doesn’t know how to die out.

How do you live with the fact that the person you resented most died for you?

How do you hold the weight of that kind of love when all you ever gave in return was coldness?

I hated the woman who was bleeding for me behind closed doors. I hated her while she was breaking herself in secret, hiding my sisters in the walls away from monsters, loving them the way she couldn’t love me—not because she didn’t want to, because she never had the chance.

And the worst part?

I still don’t know how to grieve for her.

How do you mourn someone you spent most of your life cursing under your breath?

I want to go back and scream apologies. I want to tell her I’m sorry for believing she was weak.

For thinking she was selfish. For hating her for being the gravity that my father couldn’t shake, the ghost he never stopped loving.

I resented her because she had that power over him.

And the only acknowledgment she ever got from me was hate.

Everything she did was to protect us. Maybe those earlier years not so much. She said she was clean for Emma, that it was too late the damage was done.

She gave them everything because she couldn’t give it to us. She gave me a chance to survive without her, and she gave them the parts of her that survived without me.

And now she’s gone, and I don’t know what’s left inside me that isn’t broken or full of rage.

It’s not just grief for her.

It’s grief for the life I thought I had before all this. Grief for the version of me that didn’t know the difference between captivity and care.

I used to rail against my cage. I thought Leone and Milo were my captors. That I was being punished for surviving. I didn’t realize until I was chained by Mikhail what real captivity looked like. What true helplessness felt like. And to think my mother endured him for years.

Mikhail’s version of a prison is the kind that strips you down to your bones and makes you beg. Makes you wish for the prison you thought you escaped.

Now I know that deal I made with Leone, that bargain, my life for theirs, it wasn’t a sentence.

It was freedom. I just didn’t know how to see it, then.

It was the first time in my life I wasn’t responsible for someone else’s well-being.

No Emma. No Dad. No constant terror of what might happen if I failed again.

For once, I wasn’t a caregiver. I wasn’t the glue. I wasn’t the one holding the damn walls from caving in around us.

I was just me.

And I didn’t know how to exist like that.

I was so used to being someone else’s tether, someone’s protector, someone’s reason —I didn’t even know who I was without that weight on my shoulders. I’d been carrying a mountain for so long, the absence of it felt like falling.

I thought I was free when I was suffering.

I thought being needed made me whole. It turns out, being seen made me whole.

Leone saw me, even when I hated him. Milo listened, even when I screamed.

They made space for me, not Fallon-the-carer, not Fallon-the-sacrifice, just me .

The woman who forgot she was allowed to want anything.

Allowed to feel safe. To feel loved. To feel like she mattered outside of what she could give.

And now it’s all slipping away again.

Because my mother is dead.

Because my baby might be, too.

Because my father is drowning in a grief I made worse by hating her.

Because my sisters, the ones I didn’t even know existed, might grow up remembering the same hatred I carried, and I don’t know how to stop it.

I don’t know how to hold any of this.

I don’t know if I can.

And I just—I just want to feel anything that isn’t this.

Milo’s behind me, his chest a solid wall against my back, his arms wrapped around my ribs like he’s trying to hold me together.

Like maybe he knows I’m about to splinter apart into pieces no one can sweep up.

His warmth is almost unbearable. Leone stands under the second stream, quiet, eyes locked on me like he’s not sure if touching me will break me further or bring me back.

“I’m here,” Milo murmurs against the side of my neck. “We’re here.”

I don’t answer. I don’t have words for the weight in my lungs. My mother’s dead and Emma will never meet her. The baby might not be okay. My father’s grief.

My arms wrap around myself even as Milo’s hold tightens. My chin dips to my chest, forehead pressed to the tile wall. I close my eyes, and I see her again. My mother. Rebecca. The way her body looked in the dirt. My father wrecked and weeping. The way I couldn’t stop any of it.

She died trying to protect what was left of us.

And I didn’t get to say thank you. Or I love you.

Or I forgive you. She just… left. And now I have these two girls whose lives are already cracked, and a father who might never come back from what he saw.

And inside me, there’s this tiny thing growing—maybe growing—maybe already gone—and I don’t know how to hold any of it.

My breath hitches. Then again. Then it comes in ragged gasps. Grief, thick and choking, claws up my throat.

“I can’t,” I whisper.

“Fallon—” Milo moves like he wants to pull me tighter. I twist away from him, pace unsteady. I slump against the tile, wet hair plastered to my face, hands shaking. “I can’t —I can’t—there’s too much. I don’t know how to be okay.”

“You don’t have to be okay,” Leone says. He’s closer now, his hand out, not touching yet. “Not right now.”

“I don’t feel anything.” The lie cuts my tongue, burning on the way out. “No, that’s not right. I feel everything . I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I want to scream, I want to die, I want to burn this fucking world down and build a new one. I can’t . I want to take it back!”

Leone grips my chin, tilting my face up. “Take what back?” he murmurs, and that knife that feels like it’s carving my heart from my chest twists a little deeper.

“Hating her,” the words scrape out of my throat painfully.

“I can’t fix this,” I choke, realizing now I don’t have the answers for once.

I can’t scheme my way out of this, can’t pull a second shift or a second job, can’t fix it with money, bargain for it, apologize, steal it or go back in time to save her.

I have to live with it and I can’t, I don’t know how.

“Fallon,” Milo tries, soft again. “None of this is your fault,” he murmurs.

“No. You don’t get it. She died for me, the one person who hated her the most and she had to prove she didn’t deserve that hate by fucking dying for me!

” I don’t know which part is anger and which part is grief so I know which part is panic when I can no longer breathe.

Like invisible fingers are squeezing my throat so tight I feel like I’m sucking in air through a straw.

The feeling of grief, of pain, is overwhelming. It feels like it’s the only thing I can feel right now and it’s the last thing I want to feel.

Leone stares at me, his eyes searching mine. Looking for some sign that I’m okay or at least, that I will be. I want to tell both him and Milo not to worry about me. I can’t make the words form.

“It’s not your fault, Fallon.” he repeats and suddenly all I can think about is him. How much I wanted him when we were separated.

How I longed to be here with him and Milo. To feel the safety they gave me. How I wished for them to drive all thoughts from my mind.

Pushing up onto my toes, I press my lips to his.

My hands move to his chest, pressing against his skin.

Skin that’s so real and so warm that it chases away that sadness…

That grief for just a brief moment. His lips move against mine, softly at first. Hesitant like he’s making sure I won’t run from him.

Then he’s kissing me back, hard, possessive, a groan rumbling in his chest that vibrates through me.

His tongue sweeps into my mouth, not asking, just taking, and I give him everything.

I meet his hunger with my own, a desperate, clawing need to feel something, anything, other than the crushing weight of loss.

My fingers dig into his pecs, holding on like he’s the only solid thing in a world that’s tilted on its axis.

Leone’s hand slides from my chin to my nape, tangling in my wet hair, angling my head for a deeper kiss. His other arm snakes around my waist, yanking me flush against him. His erection presses against my stomach.

Grief, shame, and a desperate, clawing need for oblivion collide, and it all pours into this kiss. I want to forget. I want to feel something other than the crushing weight on my chest. I want him. I want them.