I set the mug down on the nightstand and rubbed a hand over my jaw. I wasn’t shaking, but something in me felt loose. Raw. Like skin scraped too thin.
“He saw it,” I said. “The whole thing. The kids, the blood. He didn’t stop me. Just… watched. Then, he got the kids away, okay? So, that was good, right?” Rio didn’t interrupt. He knew how to listen. How to wait without pressing. “I think he hated me for what I did,” I continued. “Or maybe I hated myself. I couldn’t tell. But I didn’t want him to fix any of the noise. I didn’t want to see him after totalk.I just—” I blew out a breath. “I forced him to put me on my knees,” I said, finally.
The words hung in the air, heavy and absolute. No shame. No apology. Just the truth.
“Ineededthat,” I added, voice lower now. “Not comfort. Not redemption. Just… control. I needed him to take it. To push me down and remind me there was still something stronger than the chaos in my head.” Rio was quiet, eyes unreadable. “I didn’t want to fall apart,” I said, staring at the blankets bunched in my lap. “Not in front of him. So I gave him something else. Let him pretend it was about sex. Letmyselfpretend.”
“But it wasn’t just that?”
“It never is.”
“You trust himthatmuch?” Rio asked, tone careful now.
I looked up at him. “I don’t know why,” I said. “It’s fucking stupid, I know.”
Rio exhaled. His hand lifted from my shoulder. He leaned back a little, giving me space but not moving away. “No,” he said. “It’s not stupid. It’srisky. But not stupid.” He studied me for a long moment, then added, “Just tell me one thing—was he what you needed in that moment?”
I didn’t even have to think. “Yeah. He was.”
Rio nodded. “Then, I don’t give a fuck what it looks like to anyone else.”
That meant more than I could say. Because if Rio had judged me, I didn’t know what I’d do. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. He was the line I didn’t want to cross.
“You know I’ve got you, right?” he said, more serious now. “No matter what.”
I nodded. “I know.” And I did. Because when the world burned, Rio was the one person who’d never let me go up with it.
“But if you go off alone again, bring that shit to Redcars, around Cassidy, around Robbie, I swear, I will smack you into next week.”
The garage was quiet.
Rio was out on a delivery, Enzo was picking up parts, and Logan was still away with his man down in San Diego. I was the one here to watch over things, and I wandered past the lineup of half-gutted engines,caught a whiff of oil and something sweet—vanilla, maybe cinnamon. Sugar.
When I passed the doorway to the little kitchen off the break room, I caught sight of Robbie hunched in a chair, one knee pulled up to his chest, a worn hoodie bunched at the elbows. He had a couple of coding books spread out in front of him, old-school hardcovers with cracked spines and faded print.
I slowed.
“Those are ancient,” I said, grabbing a cookie from the cooling rack. “Perlisn’t even a current coding language anymore. It’s practically digital Latin.”
Robbie looked up, then down at the open page as if he was only just realizing what he’d been reading. “Yeah, I figured. It mentioned something called CGI scripts, and I had to Google what the hell that even meant.”
I snorted. “Jesus. That’s, like, GeoCities-era shit.”
He smiled, a little crooked. “They were in a box in the upstairs office. I thought they might be useful.”
“They’re not,” I said, chewing. “But the fact that you were willing to read them? Thatis.” I leaned against the counter, grabbed another of the cookies cooling on a rack, still warm. “You know you can justGoogle that stuff and get something way more current, right?”
“I like books,” he said with a shrug. “Easier to focus.”
I took a bite of the cookie—sweet, with a little kick of salt. “Fair,” I said, through the chew. “Still, these are ancient in tech terms.”
Robbie glanced down at the open page. “I figured. Some of the coding syntax doesn’t match the stuff in the online courses Enzo got me.”
That tugged a little at something behind my ribs. I loved Enzo for Robbie, and Robbie for Enzo. The big man was born to care for Robbie, and they fit together like… I don’t fucking know… like two things that fit.
I watched him for a second longer. The kid—God, I still called him a kid, even though I knew he hated that—had come a long way since Enzo and Rio had found him half-dead and terrified, covered in scars and hollowed out with pain.
But now? He looked… not fine. But better. His hair was longer, messier, and he no longer dyed it, so it was a head of blond waves. He wore Enzo’s too-big hoodie like armor, and there was still a shadow behind his eyes if you knew where to look—but he was sitting here. Reading. Studying.Trying.
