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CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

I HADN’T SPOKEN to Mystic in days.

I hadn’t touched him, hadn’t looked him in the eye, hadn’t let myself get close enough to breathe the same air.

I knew how to survive on silence. I had spent years perfecting it—letting quiet fill the spaces where screams used to live. When the world took everything from you, silence became a shield. A way to keep your insides from spilling out.

And now? I was using it again. Not because I wanted to hurt him.

Because I didn’t trust myself not to break.

Because if I opened my mouth—if I let even one word out—I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop. The grief, the betrayal, the ache of loving someone who’d hidden something so big... it all sat in my chest like fire trapped in glass. One crack, and it would all shatter.

So I said nothing.

And I stayed curled up in the farthest corner of the common room, where the noise wasn’t so loud and the shadows gave me space to disappear. Or at least try to.

But disappearing never worked around Chain.

I didn’t notice him sit down at first—not until the weight of his stare cut through the fog in my head.

“You’re gonna have to talk sometime, you know.”

His voice wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t cruel either. It was steady, like he didn’t expect me to listen, but he wasn’t leaving until I did.

I exhaled slow, keeping my eyes on the floor. “I don’t have to talk to anyone.”

“No. You don’t.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “But I think you need to hear me out.”

I frowned at that, just enough to glance his way. “Why?”

Chain shrugged like the answer was obvious. “Because I think you’ve got a half-finished story in your head, and you’re filling in the rest with shit that ain’t true.”

I said nothing.

What was there to say?

He sighed, like he wasn’t surprised by my silence. “You want to know about Chelsea?”

Her name made my stomach clench. I didn’t say yes. Didn’t say no. But he kept going.

His gaze drifted past me, distant now. Like he was seeing another time, another version of Mystic.

“She got her claws in him young,” Chain said flatly. “Way before he had a chance to figure out who he even was. He was just a kid. And she… she was already poison wrapped in something pretty.”

My breath caught before I could stop it.

“She started small,” he continued. “Little comments. Little manipulations. Took him apart piece by piece until he didn’t know what parts were his anymore.”

I didn’t want to hear this. But I couldn’t look away.

“She told him she was pregnant when they were seventeen.”

My head jerked up.

“Made him think he had no choice but to stay. That he had to step up. Be a man. Support her. And you know him—he took that shit seriously. He enlisted before graduation to make sure she’d have what she needed.”

I whispered the question before I could stop myself. “Was she really pregnant?”

Chain gave a humorless smile. “No. She never was. She just knew the only way to keep him was to trap him.”

My chest tightened, breath catching like I’d been punched from the inside.

“By the time he found out she lied, it was already too late. He was overseas. They were married. And that woman? She never let up. Every letter, every phone call, she found new ways to manipulate him so he’d never leave her.”

I closed my eyes, trying to breathe past the sickness curling low in my gut.

“And that’s the thing with Chelsea,” Chain continued, his voice growing colder. “She didn’t break him all at once. She did it slow. Quiet. So by the time he realized he was bleedin’, he couldn’t remember where the cuts started.”

I opened my eyes, but I couldn’t speak, because I knew that feeling too well.

“She made him believe he was lucky she stayed. That her staying was some kind of mercy.” Chain’s eyes darkened. “And when he came back from the war—scarred, wrecked, drowning in nightmares—she leaned in harder. Made him believe that was all he’d ever deserve.”

I had never once thought of him as ruined. Never thought of him as broken or unwanted.

But he had.

Because she told him that. Over and over, until he believed it. He hadn’t just been hiding his marriage. He’d been hiding the part of himself that thought I’d leave. That thought I’d look at his broken pieces and run.

And I had.

“I thought he lied because he didn’t care,” I whispered, more to myself than him. “But it wasn’t about me.”

Chain’s voice was quieter now. “It was about survival. The kind of survival where you expect everyone to leave, so you push them away before they get the chance—only he didn’t do that with you.”

I blinked back the sting behind my eyes.

And still, I said, “He should’ve told me.”

“Yeah. He should’ve.” Chain stood slowly, stretching his spine. “But maybe next time, instead of walkin’ away, you ask him why he didn’t. Mystic loves you more than his own life and if you keep this shit up it’ll end him.”

I didn’t move. Couldn’t.

Because something deep inside me had cracked wide open, and for the first time, I wasn’t sure it was just about me anymore.

Maybe Mystic had spent years living in a lie someone else wrote for him, and maybe by running, I’d just helped prove that lie true.

***

I HAD SPENT so much time convincing myself that my anger was righteous, wearing it like my own heartbeat, telling myself the silence I wrapped around my heart was protection, not punishment. I told myself the distance was deserved, that it was the price he owed for the hurt he'd caused.

But now, I wasn’t sure.

Because the more I turned Chain’s words over in my mind—his calm, measured voice cutting through my mind like a scalpel—the more I realized I’d only ever seen one side of the pain.

Maybe I hadn’t wanted to see the rest.

Because once you admit someone else's hurt, you have to reckon with the ways you've added to it.

Pain doesn’t follow rules. It isn’t neat or clean. It doesn’t pick sides. And love— real love —doesn’t fall into simple categories of right or wrong. It bleeds across every line.

The hallway stretched ahead of me, narrow and quiet, but each step I took felt heavier than it should have. Like the weight of what I carried was pressing down through the soles of my feet, trying to hold me back.

No one stopped me.

No one needed to.

The quiet that followed me said enough. I could feel them—people I had barely spoken to in days—watching from doorways and corners, not judging, not questioning. Just… watching. Like they all knew where I was going.

When I reached his door, I didn’t knock.

I didn’t hesitate.

I just opened it.

He was lying flat on the bed, arms at his sides, eyes on the ceiling like he was staring through it. He looked like he hadn’t moved in hours, like he’d folded himself into stillness because it hurt less than hope.

The bedside lamp was the only thing casting light in the room. Soft. Dim. It slid across the angles of his face, catching the scars that Chelsea had tried to convince him were monstrous. But all I saw was the face I had traced in the dark—over and over—with the reverence of a woman trying to memorize the man she loved.

My chest ached at the sight of him.

He didn’t turn his head. Didn’t move.

Because in his mind, I wasn’t here to stay.

I was here to hurt him again. Twist the knife a little deeper. Say the things he had already told himself a thousand times, and then disappear.

I didn’t let myself think. Didn’t let guilt or pride crawl back in and drag me under. I crossed the room without pause, climbed onto the bed beside him like I belonged there, like I’d never left, and slipped my arms around him—quiet and steady, no drama, no demands. Just touch. Just truth.

He went still beneath me. The kind of still that screams. The kind that comes from not knowing if the next breath will heal you or break you wide open.

His chest lifted under my cheek, then held.

I tightened my arms.

“I don’t want to fight anymore,” I whispered. The words came out dry and soft, like they’d been trapped inside me too long.

He didn’t answer.

Not right away.

His breath stayed measured. Careful. Like he was afraid to believe this was real. And maybe I didn’t deserve him to believe it—not yet. Maybe I’d earned that hesitation.

So I stayed there, cheek pressed to his shoulder, drawing strength from the steady rhythm beneath his skin. And after a long moment, I gave him the one thing I hadn’t before.

The truth.

“I just want to understand.”

The silence between us stretched.

And then… something shifted.

Not much. Just a soft drop in the tension held in his frame. Like something inside him had loosened, the first crack in a dam too long braced against collapse.

He turned his head, just slightly, and when he spoke, his voice brushed close to my temple—rough and bare, like it had clawed its way out of him.

“I didn’t tell you because I was afraid I’d lose you.”

The words didn’t surprise me. I’d already felt them, seen them in the way he looked at me that day. But hearing them broke something deeper.

Because it meant I had done exactly what he feared.

I had left.

No questions. No chances. No fight.

I had walked away like he wasn’t worth staying for, and in doing so, I’d made her words true. The ones that had haunted him for years.

When our eyes met, his gaze was tired. Cautious. But not closed off.

I reached up, fingers trembling, and brushed along the edge of his jaw. Slow. Careful. Not to startle him. Not to push.

Just to tell him, without words, that I was still here.

“I’m not leaving,” I said softly.

His throat worked around a slow, uncertain swallow. His fingers twitched once against the sheets, like he didn’t trust himself to reach for me.

“I mean it,” I breathed. “Not ever.”

Something flickered in his eyes. A shift. A crack in the pain he’d been holding. Relief and hope, and in that moment, the silence between us didn’t feel like punishment anymore.

It felt like peace.

I didn’t need him to speak. Not tonight. Not yet.

All I needed was the steady rhythm of his breathing beneath my cheek. The warmth of his skin. The way he didn’t pull away.

And when he finally moved—slow, hesitant—his arm came around me like he wasn’t sure he had the right, but couldn’t stand to be without me.

I closed my eyes. I didn’t know how long we stayed like that, his arm across my back, my head tucked beneath his chin, the slow rise and fall of his chest calming the storm still churning inside me.

But at some point, something shifted.

Not in his body, not in mine, but in the space between us.

I moved first, not much, just a tilt of my head, just enough to look up at him, to see the outline of his jaw, the slope of his nose, the way his lashes cast shadows on his cheeks in the dim light.

He didn’t look at me right away.

Not until I touched him.

My fingertips brushed lightly against his side, just above his ribs, and I felt the breath stutter in his lungs.

His hand slid up slowly, brushing the curve of my spine like he was memorizing it all over again, like he was afraid I’d vanish if he moved too fast. And maybe I would’ve—if he hadn’t looked at me the way he did just then.

Like I was still his. Like I hadn’t already run. Like I hadn’t already hurt him.

My fingers tangled in the front of his shirt, holding on, not to pull him closer, but to ground myself. Because everything about him, his warmth, his scent, the quiet patience in his touch—was unraveling me.

When he leaned in, it was a kiss made of hunger and heat.

It wasn’t reverent or soft and I returned his kiss with a hunger of my own.