Page 78 of Hollow

I flinch at the word. Family. The one thing he never had. The thing we’d tried to build together, in our own fucked-up way.

“I know,” I say quietly. “I knew you had no one else. That everyone else had already abandoned you. And then I did the exact same thing.”

I was a fucking asshole.

“I’m sorry.” The words feel inadequate, but I mean them. “I should have told you I was leaving. Should have explained.”

“Yeah.” He looks away, out the window toward the sea. “You should have.”

Another long silence falls. I watch him, seeing the tension in his shoulders, the way he holds himself like he’s bracing for a blow.

“And when you came back,” he continues, still not looking at me, “and found me with Connor...”

“I wanted to kill you both.” The admission comes easily. “I was so fucking angry.”

“I could tell.” His eyes find mine again, a flash of dark humor there. “You broke my nose.”

“You deserved it.”

“Probably.” He picks at a loose thread on his sweatpants. “But Connor didn’t. He was just... there.”

“Like all the others were just there?” I can’t keep the bitterness hidden. “After we broke up, you fucked half the island.”

“And you didn’t?” He raises an eyebrow, challenging. “Don’t act like you were celibate after me, Damiano. I know better.”

He’s right. After we split, I was almost as bad as him. Different body every week, trying to burn away the memory of Flint, trying to prove I didn’t need him. It never worked.

“It was never about them,” I admit quietly. “It was about hurting you.”

“Yeah.” He nods, something softening in his expression. “Same.”

It’s the closest we’ve come to honesty in years. I take a sip of my coffee, buying time to find the right words.

“Briar’s different,” I eventually say.

“She is.” He pushes off from the counter, coming around to sit on one of the stools. “She’s... fuck, I don’t know. She makes things make sense.”

“Even with everything that happened? With Liam?”

“Maybe because of it.” He breaks off a piece ofmuffin, rolling it between his fingers like I did. “We’re all carrying the same weight now.”

I nod, understanding what he means. The three of us are bound by blood and secrets, yes, but there’s something else, too. Something deeper, harder to explain.

“So what do we do?” I ask.

“About Briar?”

“About us.” I gesture between us. “This thing between us. It doesn’t just go away because there’s a third person involved now.”

Flint looks at me for a long moment, something complicated moving behind his eyes. “No,” he says. “It doesn’t.”

“So we figure it out.”

“How? We’ve been trying to figure it out for years, and look where that got us.”

“This time, it’s different.” I move closer to him, aware of the air shifting in the room as I do. “This time, we have someone keeping us honest.”

“Briar.” He says her name like it’s something precious.

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