Page 24 of The Ache That Stayed

Didn’t stop the thought from living under my ribs like shrapnel. Didn’t stop the way my chest tightened when I thought about her curled up in bed, unaware of how close I was to breaking every promise I’d ever made and stuck to all this time.

I told myself it was the right thing to do—to leave.

Because distance meant safety.

Because silence meant survival.

Because staying would destroy the life she’d fought to build.

My hands shook from restraint.

From the image of her under strobe lights, refusing to leave me alone.

That makes her a liability.

Sean knew. Of course he knew. Men like him didn’t accuse unless they already had answers.

I shook the thought away. Right now, all I had to think of was that she needed protection, even if I was the last man she wanted to see.

Sean called her a liability. Maybe she was. Maybe anyone standing too close to me eventually became one.

But if danger followed me, then I’d stand close enough to be hit first. That wasn’t possession. It was penance. Better me bleeding than her. Better my ruin than hers. Let the damage stop with me. If someone had to break, it would be me.

Damn you, Sean.

He had a way of getting under my skin. That’s why I’d sworn never to see him again after my divorce.

Until the realisation of my obsession with her cemented my decision.

I crushed the fourth cigarette under my boot and finally moved. This was a mistake. I knew that.

I told myself I was checking the house. The lie lasted all the way to the front door.

The door didn’t creak when I stepped inside. The house breathed with warmth. Lived-in.

Her scent still lived in the air. Faint. Fading. Still enough to find with my eyes closed. Soothing and sweet that hit my chest like a bruise.

I stood there longer than I should have, blood drying across my knuckles, ribs aching under my shirt, head still ringing from the fight.

Then I stepped inside anyway. Discipline had already failed.

Two years ago I would’ve called this instinct. Now I knew better. This was weakness wearing devotion’s face. And every step toward her felt like testing the leash I kept wrapped around my own throat.

I walked to the kitchen sink, and I shoved my hands under scalding water, watching Big Bob’s blood swirl down the drain in dark ribbons, spiralling like it belonged there. My knuckles throbbed with every heartbeat.

Red diluted to pink. Pink to nothing. Like violence could be erased if you scrubbed hard enough. It never is.

I shouldn’t be here. I knew that. But I wanted to see her again. Proof that she was breathing. Safe. Alive. Untouched by the parts of the world I lived in.

I’d watch her for a bit, like I’d done the past two nights, and leave. She wouldn’t even know. I’d already broken that promise twice. Two nights of breaking the same vow, each time easier than the last.

I came here to escape, disappear. Only to find she had a project here. And since I’d committed to Sean, I couldn’t leave.

Fate had a funny way of dragging her back into my orbit ever since I met her. She arrived like gravity. And gravity doesn’t ask permission.

I’d stayed away every time she was in town. Forced myself not to check, not to trace her movements the way I used to. I even stopped memorising her schedules—the cafés she preferred, the hours she slept. Avoided the manor, avoided the roads I knew she’d take twice a month.

My plans to avoid her washed away the night I spotted her at the club. I should have turned around the second I saw her silhouette. But I didn’t.