Page 131 of Jayson
This ends with him. It has to. Because Keira’s safety and a future that’s guaranteed is all I care about now.
She hasn’t movedsince the sobs stopped—blanket clutched tight around her like it’s the only thing holding her bones together. Her eyes are swollen, her voice hollowed out.
I should leave now.
I should walk away, deal with the people who need dealing with, and let her rest. But I can’t—not yet. Not with the weight of that damn picture still bleeding between us.
I step toward her. She doesn’t look at me. Just stares at the floor like it’s whispering things only she can hear.
“I have to go,” I say.
I wait.
“You came,” she says, voice low and frayed.
The words hang there. Heavy. Unfinished. The shadows swallow the breath from my lungs. I inhale slow, measured. I don’t speak.
“You killed the only man that should have protected me,” she continues. “You caged me. Married me. Took what little innocence I had left and buried it without even looking me in the eye.”
She wraps the blanket tighter. Her hands tremble beneath it. “You broke me, Jayson.”
A muscle jumps in my jaw. My voice comes quiet, reluctant. “If you’re waiting for an apology…”
“I’m not.”
Her eyes cut to mine—glass bright and defiant through the tears.
“I wanted to hate you. I really did. I tried,” she says, and her voice starts to shake. “But every time you did something unforgivable, you did it without pretending to be anything else. You never lied to me. You never dressed it up. You showed me the monster and said, ‘Take it or run.’”
She leans forward, elbows braced on her knees, eyes locked on the fire like she’s watching something burn that only she can see. Her voice is low—strangled in places, like it costs her to speak.
“And I think—God help me—I love you for it,” she says. “Because you ruined me honestly.”
The room stops breathing.
I watch her like a man watching a house collapse in slow motion. Her shoulders are pulled tight, jaw locked, eyes glintinglike she’s already bracing for the fallout—like she expects me to throw her confession back at her, sharp-edged and weaponized.
But I don’t. Instead, I say the one thing I never say out loud. The one thing I’ve never let any woman drag from me. Not even the ones who bled for me.
“I don’t think I know what that word means, Keira.”
It grinds out of me like gravel. Thick with shame. Scarred with truth. Because no woman has ever earned my heart. But maybe…
My hands are shaking, so I lace them together like maybe if I tie myself up, I won’t come apart.
“When the house was under attack… when I heard you screaming—” I pause, swallowing back bile. “I felt something I didn’t recognize. And I know rage. Rage is familiar. It’s warm. It makes sense. But this?”
I rise and cross the room slowly until I reach her. My palms rest on either side of her legs—not holding her in place, just… anchoring us both to something real. Something solid.
“It was terror.”
The word hangs there like a bullet between us.
“Not panic. Not adrenaline. Terror. The kind that chews through bone. The kind that makes you wish for death just so you don’t have to live long enough to lose what matters.”
Her fingers curl in the blanket. She’s holding herself together by sheer force of will.
“Nothing has ever mattered to me, Keira,” I tell her. “Not in a way that made me want to live better. Cleaner. And I can’t promise you redemption. I can’t promise you soft things.”
