Page 51 of The Vagabond

She steps closer, chest rising like a storm’s trapped inside her ribs. Her hands ball into fists like she's fighting the urge to throw them at me.

“I want to hate you,” she says.

“Then hate me.”

“You left me there.”

“I know.”

“Youknewwhat they were doing—what they’d already done.” She’s shaking now, eyes glossed over with fury and grief, a silent scream locked behind her teeth. “You broke something in me.”

I nod. “I broke something in me, too.”

Then she grabs me—fists curled in my collar—and kisses me like it’s the last thing she’ll ever allow herself to want. She tastes like vengeance. Like violence. Likewar.

There’s nothing sweet in it. Nothing tender. It’s teeth. Tongue. Fury. Grief. A goodbye masked as a claim. A punishmentdisguised as a kiss. And I let her take whatever she needs. If this is the last time she ever looks at me like I’m anything other than the man who failed her—I’ll carry it like a goddamn scar carved into my chest.

She pulls away with a gasp. Shoves me hard. I stumble. I take it.

“I can’t forgive you,” she says, voice like splinters.

“I’m not here for your forgiveness.”

“I don’t know if I’lleverforgive you.”

“I’m still here.”

She turns away, shoulders trembling like the weight of her past just crushed her all over again.

And I do the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I leave. Not because I want to. But because if I stay, I’ll burn her down with me. Because I don’t know how to love her gently—not when every part of me is violence in her name. So I walk—slow, hollow—carrying the echo of her silence like a scar. And with every step, it feels like I’m peeling myself away from the only place I’ve ever feltreal.Because she may survive without me. But I’ll never survive her.

22

MAXINE

After the door clicks shut behind him, everything inside me shatters. It’s not loud or cinematic. Just quiet. Like bones cracking under too much pressure. Like something breaking that was already held together by threadbare hope and a whispered lie.

I don’t move. Ican’t. My knees lock. My chest caves in. My breath catches like it forgot how to be a living thing. Because he’s gone. Again. And I let him touch me like he had a right to do so.

I stumble back like I’ve been punched, and my shoulder hits the edge of my bookshelf, hard enough to bruise.

“I’m so fucking stupid,” I whisper. The words tremble out of me like they’re afraid of their own truth. “I let him touch me. I let him touch me?—”

I don’t make it to the wall before the scream rips out of me. It’s feral. Ugly. Real.

I grab the lamp and smash it against the floor. Glass explodes. Sparks. Maybe I’ll burn this whole fucking house down. Maybe I should.

I claw at the framed photos—Mia smiling, Sophia laughing—rip them from the walls and throw them like they were the ones who left me in that goddamn room. Like they were the ones who promised to save me and never came back.

And I am screaming. Not just with my voice, but with my entire body. The sound of betrayal doesn’t come from the mouth. It comes from the ribs. From the place where hope curled up and died.

“I begged for him!” I cry, voice raw. “I begged, and he left me there!”

I fall to my knees, glass crunching beneath me. Blood paints the floor, but I don’t care. There’s something in me that wants to crawl out. Something dark and desperate and done.

“I needed him,” I whisper. “And he knew. He knew what they were doing to me. He knew what would happen to me.”

My palms slap the floor. Again. Again. Until my skin splits and my vision goes black at the edges.

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