Page 34 of Jayson
I take a slow sip of tea, let the warmth coat my throat, and set the cup back down gently before I speak again.
“I have a question for you.”
Nina arches a brow. “What’s that?”
“Tell me about Jayson.”
Her mouth quirks, wry. “That’s not a question.”
“Tell me anyway.”
She studies me again, and for a moment, I think she’ll dodge telling me. Wrap her memories in anecdotes and old woman riddles and brush it off like she would the weather. But she doesn’t. She leans forward, rests her elbows on her knees, and whispers into the room.
“He’s been gone a long time. But when he was here…”
The fire crackles behind us. Her voice softens.
“He was a boy who felt too much. Thought too hard. Always quiet, yet observing. He always tried to fix things that were broken, even if it ruined him in the process.”
I swallow hard. Something in my chest aches.
“He loved this house once,” she continues, looking around the room like nostalgia has her in a chokehold. “The land. The woods. The quiet. But love doesn’t survive violence untouched. Not here.”
She pauses. Like the memory hurts.
“His father—” she stops. Starts again, slower. “Was not a…kind man. He blamed Jayson for alot of things you couldn’t hold a young child accountable for. Tried to make him into something Jayson wasn’t ready for.”
My fingers curl into the hem of my sweater. I don’t speak.
“You may see him as a monster,” Nina says gently. “And maybe sometimes, he is. But only because someone taught him that monsters survive longer than boys with hearts too big for their bodies.”
I blink hard. Look away. Because it shouldn’t matter to me either way. But it does. It matters too much.
“Is that why he brought me here?” I ask quietly. “Because he doesn’t know what to do with that softness?”
Nina tilts her head, eyes glinting with something old and aching. “You know why you’re here, Keira. But I think hebrought you here because he’s terrified of what he sees in you.”
I swallow that down. The ache. The guilt. The heat. And for the first time in days, I wonder if Jayson and I aren’t so different after all. We’re just two people taught to survive in all the wrong ways.
The air thickens around us. I look into the fire, but all I can see is him.Jayson.The way he doesn’t quite meet my eyes when he talks. The way his jaw clenches like it’s holding secrets his mouth won’t let go of. How he stood in that bedroom doorway and raised a gun to my head—shoulders squared, fury in every line of his body—but he didn’t pull the trigger.
He could’ve ended me, but he didn’t. And ever since, I’ve been caught in this slow, torturous unraveling—falling into something sharp and silent and inevitable. I shouldn’t be feeling this. Not for the man who locked me in a box and hid me from the world. But somehow… I do. And hearing Nina say it—say that once, there was a boy with too much heart—it shatters something inside me. Because I know what it’s like to feel too much but be a prisoner of your own circumstance. Iknowit.
He pretends to be stone, but I’ve seen it. The tremor in his hands. The way he watches me like he’s waiting for a reason not to forgive himself.
I finish my tea and place the cup down with care.
“He still lives here?” I ask quietly, even though I already know the answer.
Nina doesn’t speak right away. But her eyes flick toward the stairs. I follow her gaze—nothing there but shadow. She smiles again, softer this time.
“I think he never left,” she says.
And that’s when I feel it. That subtle shift in the air. The weight of a presence behind the walls. My breath catches, throattightening. Because I know he’s there. Listening. Watching. Bleeding in silence like he always does.
I don’t turn my head. The ache in my chest is enough. Heavy. Unforgiving. And laced with longing. I want to reach for him. I want to pull him out of whatever past he’s buried himself in and ask him if he remembers what it feels like to feel. But I don’t. Instead, I sit back. I let the silence hold. And I let the fire burn.
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