Page 107 of Second Sin

Just the dead weight of it. Settling in your lungs. Stealing the air without you noticing.

You don’t cry down here.

You don’t even breathe right.

You just exist.

And somehow, that’s worse.

Worse than the guilt.

Worse than the shame.

Worse than knowing youbuiltthis place brick by fucking brick.

The penthouse is cold. Lights off. City stretched beyond the glass like it’s mocking me.

I don’t take off my jacket. Just go straight to the bar and pour.

Whiskey. Neat. Three fingers, maybe four.

Burns going down. Not enough.

My phone’s been buzzing for the last thirty minutes. Coach. PR. A dozen numbers I don’t recognize. Kane twice. Blake. Even fucking Harper.

Not her.

I turn it off.

Pour again.

Sit on the couch with the bottle dangling from one hand and the glass in the other. Back bent. Elbows digging into my knees. Like prayer.

But there’s no god here.

Just the sound of my name echoing back from the dark—twisted, warped, poisoned by the voice of a kid I destroyed without even knowing his name.

He was right.

I took something that never should’ve been mine. A wife. A mother. A family that wasn’t mine to touch.

Didn’t stick the needle in her arm, no. But I didn’t stop it either. Didn'twalk away.

And now?

Now I’ve lost the only thing that ever made me feel like I wasn’t fucking hollow.

I destroyed it.

Of course I did.

That’s what I do. Corrode things. Break them from the inside out.

Another drink. Then another. I don’t even taste it anymore.

I toss the bottle onto the couch.

Down the next shot.

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