Page 130 of Cruel Kiss

"That's why you let him go," I say. "In the warehouse. The first time. When your father would have killed him."

"That's exactly why." He finally looks at me. "My mother died six months later. She just stopped, more or less. There was nothing left to hold her up once the fear went away. People think fear is such an awful thing, but sometimes, it's all that keeps us going. If you take it away, what's left?"

I put the wine down before I drop it. I don't trust my hands.

"There's a line," he says. "In the letter. I wrote it because I thought I'd be dead before you read it. But I'll say it to your face instead, like I promised." He holds my eyes. "I never once regretted it. Not one single day. I've regretted a lot of things I've done, Calista. I've regretted things I did toyou. But that? Killing my father? I have never regretted it, and I never will. If that damns me, then fuck it, let it damn me. I'm done hiding true things from you."

I sit with it. All of it. The glass against the wall. The woman on her knees. The skinny boy who picked up the biggest shard because nobody else in that kitchen was ever going to.

There's data here aplenty, if I wanted to run the query. Heat maps and spreadsheets, confidence intervals and tidy little sums. But how do you encodeI killed my father to save my mother?That's not something that fits into math. No query can contain it.

So I close my eyes and tell my thinking brain to shut up.

And Ifeelinstead.

There, I find the certainty I need.

I find a boy who watched his mother disappear an inch at a time and vowed,No more.

I find a man who built a house for orphans in her name so no other kid would have to suffer like that.

I find a person who took the mirrors out of my bathroom because he couldn't stand to watch me do the same slow vanishing act that she did.

Not a monster.

Not a saint, either.

Simply a person, shaped by the worst thing that ever happened to him, trying with everything he has not to become it.

"Okay," I say.

He blinks. "That's it? Okay?"

"You told me the worst thing about you. And it's the story of a boy who protected his mother from a monster." I reach over and take his hand. "I've spent my whole life running numbers, Ronan. I ran them on you. They weren't in your favor, as you know. And I chose you anyway. And guess what? I was right. So don't sit there waiting for me to cower away. I'm done with that."

I pick up the envelope. Still sealed.

"I'm giving this back," I say, thrusting it out toward him. "And I want you to burn it."

His head snaps up.

"It's a goodbye letter," I explain in response to his questioning look. "You wrote it because you thought you weren't coming home. But you did come home. You're sitting on my steps drinking wine I bought for exactly this. A man who stays doesn't need to leave notes." I nod at the envelope. "So burn it. We don't need it."

He looks at me for a long moment. Then he takes the other thing I brought out, a little lighter, and flicks it. The little flame stands up in the dark.

He holds the corner of the envelope to it. The paper catches. He holds it out over the steps, away from us, and we watch it burn—his careful handwriting curling black, all his instructions, all his confessions, all his goodbyes, turning to nothing on the concrete.

When the flame gets close to his fingers, he drops what's left and it finishes burning on the step, a small orange thing that gutters out into ash.

"Your turn," he says quietly.

I know what he means before he says it.

And sure enough, he's holding something out to me.

The napkin.

I remember like yesterday the moment he gave it to me.You needed eight receipts to deem your husband a liar and a cheat. Give me eight chances to show you that I'm anything but that. And if at any time you decide I'm just as bad as him… hand me this and I'll walk away.