Page 58 of Bitten & Burned
Whatever he found, he didn’t let on.
“Do you want advice or what?”
“I mean… yeah, I do?”
“Great. Because I’m going to share something with you. Are you ready?” he asked.
“…Yes?” I answered, more uncertain than I meant to sound.
“Stop. Making it. About you.”
The words landed like the slam of a door—brutal in their simplicity.
I groaned. “Why is everyone saying that?”
“Because… you’re making it about you?” he said, with a shrug. “I don’t know for certain—just spitballing, based on what I know about you and the conversation that we’ve had…just now.”
His facetious tone made me want to knock over one of his crates. I pictured the contents spilling across the floor, anything to disrupt his maddening calm.
I didn’t.
But I wanted to.
“Look, everything else aside, I have some actual advice: You can’t fix it. So stop trying.”
“But I just?—”
“No,” he said. One word. A command. Simple, monosyllabic—and the one I hated most. It cut cleaner than a blade, leaving noroom to wriggle free.“There’s no precise order of words you can say that’ll fix everything and make her not mad at you. You fucked up. Now sit with it until you understand exactly where you went wrong.”
The idea of marinating in my own failure made my shoulders knot tight.
“Do you know that yet?” he asked.
“No one’s in the wrong—” I began.
“So no?” He nodded, sharp and final. “Got it.” He folded his arms. “Listen. If there’s one thing I know about Rowena, it’s this: she’s not some fragile porcelain doll you tossed on the floor. She’s a grown-ass woman. She can manage her own hurt feelings.”
The certainty in his voice made it sound less like opinion and more like fact.
“She shouldn’t have to!”
He sighed heavily. “You can’t erase it. And you shouldn’t try.”
“I shouldn’t try to make it better? I shouldn’t try to makeherbetter? What happened to owning my mistakes?”
“You’re not trying to make it better,” he said, dry and low. “You’re wringing your hands and crying because apparently your guilt is more important than what she wants right now.”
“I’m not?—”
“You are.” His eyes flashed. A quick, bright spark of temper, gone almost before I could name it. “She closed the fucking door on you. That’s what she wants. To be left alone. So give it to her—for fuck’s sake.”
“It feels bad to just… leave her alone, though.”
“Tough.” The word landed flat as stone, refusing sympathy. He turned, voice flattening with finality. “Sometimes the best thing you can do is sit in the mess you made, so she doesn’t have to.”
He paused, then said it low and steady, without venom—just truth.
“Own your mistakes, Vael. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.” Nosoftness, no parting comfort—just the bare bones of truth, stripped of anything I could mistake for forgiveness.
