Page 33

T he ride back to our apartment was silent; the motorcycle ate up the night-slick streets. Oakley’s grip remained deliberately loose, her fingertips just grazing my sides—another small rebellion. The vibration of the engine beneath us both wasn't enough to bridge the distance between us.

At a stoplight, my hands reached back, fingers wrapping around both her wrists, pulling her arms forward, forcing them to wrap around me completely. Her chest pressed involuntarily against my back as her grip locked around my midsection. Her body stiffened, helmet briefly knocking against my neck as she tried to pull back, but the motion of the bike upon acceleration made her instinctively hold tighter.

Even with her body forced against mine, she made herself unreachable, her silence weaponized against me, a grief-laced rage that chose not to speak. She just watched the world blur by through the visor of her helmet as we moved farther from the clubhouse and closer to our apartment.

Her lack of words was all too familiar—the quiet before Mother's boyfriends exploded. She would go silent like this before they hurt her, and she'd still thank them for the flowers they'd bring the next day. Love was pain followed by forgiveness. Giving Oakley the forever she had never experienced, the commitment Mother's men had never given her. Why couldn't she see that?

A memory surfaced of roses mingling with antiseptic, petals crushed beside Mother's bloodied tissues, her hands fumblingfumbled, struggling to arrange flowers from a man who promised never to hurt her again.

Upon reaching the apartment, my hand pressed firmly against the small of her back, guiding her through the door. Her shoulders slumped as soon as we were alone, as if the weight of her performance had been physically crushing her.

"You lied.”

She moved to the window, keeping her back to me. Her voice was barely above a whisper. "I did."

Watching her reflection in the glass—vacant, like she’d left herself somewhere I couldn’t follow. Her lip trembled, bitten down hard, holding in something that wanted to break. "I'm not fighting to get away from you." Her voice wasn't flat or emotionless—it was controlled, the edges beginning to fray. "I don't want any blood on my hands, even if that means I sacrifice my freedom."

She turned, keeping exactly two arm-lengths of space between us didn't go unnoticed.

"I don’t understand why you’re not happy."

She stood like a storm trapped in glass, contained, but just barely.

“Happy?” Her voice cut low, tight with a fury I’d never heard from her before. "I only played along to keep everyone safe."

Wasn't this what commitment looked like? Another memory peeked through—Mother showing me her newest boyfriend's initials etched crudely on her hip. Her skin had been red, infected. But she'd smiled. Weeks later, he was gone, and she'd carved lines through his initials herself, crying that no one would ever really stay. Mine would never fade. I would never leave.

I reached out to touch her, making her recoil. My touch didn't bruise like theirs did to Mother. Why couldn't Oakley understand I was protecting her?

She grabbed a framed photo from the side table and hurled it against the wall. The glass shattered, fragments skittering across the floor. I didn't move. Didn't blink. Didn't react as shards sliced through my skin. Her fury painted itself in my flesh, glass settling into my forearm, my shoulder, my neck. Dark drops fell to the floor, joining the broken pieces at my feet.

Her chest rose and fell rapidly, eyes tracking the glass as if she'd shattered something inside herself. Her breath hitched, chin lifting sharply in resistance. She expected pain. Reaction. Something to prove I was human beneath this skin.

"Does nothing hurt you?" she whispered, fingers trembling at her sides.

I looked down at the glass jutting from my arm. My fingers wrapped around the largest shard and pulled it free. No pain registered. No signal fired through nerves that had never functioned properly. The body remembered what to do—how to bleed, how to heal—but the message never arrived.

Her jade eyes widened, pupils expanding as she watched dark fluid slide down my wrist, dropping to the floor. I held the bloody shard between us, letting her see what I'd always known.

"No," I answered, the word as empty as the space where pain should live.

"You think this is love, but love doesn't come with threats." Her voice rasped, anger completely taking over. Tears slid down her face, nothing like Mother's tears which were always mixed with makeup. "It doesn't come with witnesses laughing while you fake vows to someone unconscious." Her laugh was low and bitter. "I was never yours, V."

I remembered Mother unconscious on the couch, her boyfriend arranging her body more comfortably "more comfortably" while I watched from the hallway. When I'd tried to wake her, he'd said, " Let her rest. She trusts me to take care of her."

Trust.

That was what it was—Oakley had trusted me.

But I wasn't like those men.

I would never leave Oakley broken and alone.

If Mother had been wrong—then everything I'd built was crumbling sand. I didn't leave. I didn't hurt her—not physically. That has to matter.

If this wasn't love, what the fuck was it?

She stepped closer, her voice barely above a whisper now, "You can take my freedom. You can pretend this is love." Her shoulders squared, the smallest shake running through them. "But you'll never, ever have me willingly. I'll always be your captive. Never your wife." She shifted her weight onto her back foot, already halfway gone. "Coercion is not the way to love."

Our eyes locked, neither of us looking away, the truth of what she'd said expanding to fill every corner of the room.

For one blazing moment, I saw us as we truly were—not the romantic fantasy I'd crafted, but a captor and his victim. The look in her eyes wasn't love or even fear, but something completely new–defiance. Nothing like Mother's eyes when she stopped fighting her boyfriends, when she accepted that surviving was the only option. This was different.

I followed as she moved away from me toward the bedroom, watching as she sat on the edge of the bed. Her eyes fixed on the wedding band, twisting it around her finger until blood welled faintly.

"You should shower." Bathing always calmed her down.

She rose without acknowledgment, creating space I couldn't enter. In the bathroom, she closed the door. Moments later, I heard the shower running. Through the crack beneath the door, I could see her shadow on the floor, unmoving. Steam curled under the bathroom door, a veil separating us.

I pressed my fingertips to the door, imagining her on the other side, washing away my touch. Then the sound of muffled sobbing reached me. I leaned my forehead against the bathroom door.

She wasn't surviving me.

She was enduring me.

There was a difference.

But… what if there wasn't?

When she emerged, wrapped in a towel, her eyes were red but dry. Through the swollen skin around her wedding band, blood had beaded. She moved to the dresser, pulling out one of her nightgowns—the softest thing she owned.

Mother had owned something similar once—a pale blue cotton nightgown that she said made her feel like herself again. Before it was torn from her by hands that claimed to love her. I would never tear Oakley's softness away. That was how I knew my love was better, purer than what I'd grown up seeing. I would keep her whole, even as she fought against the safety I'd built around us.

She climbed into bed, turning away from where I would sleep—choosing to sleep on the very edge of the bed just to get away from me. Shrugging my cut off, I lay beside her rigid form, my palm hovering over the curve where her neck met shoulder. I often slept this way—fingers resting lightly on her skin, her pulse beneath my touch through the night. If I concentrated, I could sync my breathing to hers, could almost believe we shared one body, one soul.

As I watched her breathing even out in pretend sleep, an ugly truth slithered through me. Something in Oakley's defiance tonight scratched at a locked door in my mind. What if there was another way to love? The thought terrified me more than her hatred. Because if she was right—if this wasn't love—then I had no idea what was. And without that, I was nothing but the monster she accused me of being.

I wasn't the monster in her story—I was the one person who would never abandon her.

I didn't want to break her. I wanted to love her the way no one ever taught me—without bruises, without fear, without making her small just so I could feel big. I wanted to unlearn everything I'd ever seen called love and build something new.

No one ever taught me how to hold something gently without leaving it cracked. I tried. God, I tried. But everything I touched, I ruined. And by the time I realized I was hurting her, she wasn't flinching anymore—she was fading. Not running. Not fighting. Just...disappearing from the inside out. And I was still standing there, calling it love, like that would be enough to bring her back.

Mother always stayed. Because she didn't believe she could leave. But Oakley didn't need my fists to fear me. She didn't need bruises to break. She could vanish tomorrow. She still had the power to leave me. And I'd do anything to stop her.

I shifted closer, careful not to wake her. My thumb brushed her wrist lightly, feeling her heartbeat flicker beneath the skin—steady, defiant. The rhythm mocked my certainty, whispering the question I'd spent my whole life avoiding: Could love ever exist without fear?

I wouldn't be like them.

But I wouldn't let her go either.