Another Woman's POV II

We now have names for the price of being alive, diagnoses for every hurt, medications to blunt the pain so we don’t feel at all. I miss the days when I used to walk around broken and happy, carrying wrongs that had no titles, afflictions that could be forgotten. Moments when the world seemed to pause, when even the air felt light enough to carry. Now everything comes packaged: trauma with a price tag, a spectrum with labels and pills that keep us foggy through it all. No more “bad days.” No more “mood swings.”

People are ranked by bruising; how badly, how visibly, how containable until the same world that cracked them discards them like a failed transplant. I, for one, get stamped acceptable. I am the mother who never forgets picture day, who shows up with gluten-free cupcakes, who answers PTA threads with upbeat GIFs and correctly rationed exclamation points. The woman who appears to have it all under control.

I live in a body that flinches before pleasure. A mind that prepares for disaster during silence. Peace feels like a language I was never taught, like a room I’m not allowed in. I want to believe there’s more to this whole human experience than just maintenance. More than just managing the ghosts and hiding the mess behind clean lines and locked doors. that life is less about taming the monsters but more about letting them rest… Letting me rest.

Four glasses in, a dozen sad songs later, and I’m still hollow. Still untouched. Still sitting in the same goddamn silence I’ve been out-running all week. My mind won’t sleep. My heart won’t open. Doesn’t matter how many songs I line up, how many times I whisper into the glass, just to feel something in the pause between sips.

I’m not drunk!

My body’s too trained for that. Too used to pain. Too well-practiced at swallowing the burn before it touches anything real. The liquor can’t reach me. But the thoughts do. They run marathons through the ruins, dodging old ghosts, stepping over landmines of memory, while something inside me screams for more.

It’s past midnight now. That one song—the one that used to wreck me—just loops like background noise. Static through a tunnel. The whiskey’s gone warm in my hand. My chest is still. Heavy, but still. And the ache? It’s here. Always. Not sharp anymore—just dull. Domestic. Like bad perfume that clings to sweaters. Like memories you can’t bleach out of bed sheets. Like grief that’s gotten used to you.

Vincent had game night. Stayed over at a friend’s. Said he’d be back in the morning. Said not to wait up. The kids were already asleep when I got home. I checked their rooms twice. Tucked them in like it mattered. Like maybe the ritual could anchor me. Like I needed it more than they ever will. It’s been so long since I let myself sink into this kind of quiet. So long since I shut off the podcasts, paused the playlists, stopped living by perfectly timed timers.

So long since I stopped drowning him out—with scrubbing, with schedules, with outfits pressed and paired like a prayer for control. But tonight—Vincent isn’t here to dull the edges. The kids are out cold. The house is spotless. The pantry’s arranged like an altar. And still—Sleep plays hide and seek with me. And I’m always it. The silence wraps around my ribs like a vice, slow and steady, like it knows I won’t fight back. Like it’s been waiting for this.

I should be grateful. I am grateful. The house is safe. The kids are safe. Vincent’s probably somewhere laughing, eating greasy food, arguing about dice rolls. But this quiet? It’s not peace. It’s the echo of every thought I bury under to-do lists. It’s the whisper I spend all day outrunning. I’m good at noise. I’m great at busy. Busy hands. Busy mind. Cleaning. Organizing. Pretending I’m in control of something—anything. Because if I stop moving, the whisper gets louder.

My therapist says I need to let myself feel. To stop fixing everything. To stop treating healing like a home project with bullet points and deadlines. Vincent is patient with the fragments I’ve allowed him. Ten years together, and there’s still an entire country of silence I’ve refused to map for him. Yet somehow, I think he already knows.

God, how I wish he did. It would spare me the guilt-laced smiles, the quiet calculations, every time he carries more than his share while I’m barely holding on to mine.

But that’s not how this works, is it? We live in the cracks. We stitch ourselves together with shaky hands and hope the seams hold. We build lives around parts that don’t quite fit. And somehow, we tell ourselves that’s enough.

Tonight, it’s not.

Tonight, it’s me and this lukewarm whiskey, and a silence that won’t let me forget how much of my life is still survival. Not memories, just fragments of a life that Weight too much to keep. I drag myself toward the bedroom—our bedroom. The word feels foreign tonight. I pause in the doorway like an intruder in a life I no longer recognize. Warm. Safe. Two things I can’t quite claim anymore.

Vincent’s scent lingers, faint cedar threaded with that damn detergent he insists on using, no matter how many bottles of unscented I bring home. It maddens me. It anchors me. And tonight, it smells like safety.

I exhale without meaning to. My shoulders drop. My jaw unclenches. I hadn’t realized I’d been bracing for impact. There’s no one here to see me, yet I undress like I’m being watched—slow, deliberate, careful. Maybe that’s the habit now: performance, even for the mirror. Shirt first. Then trousers. Then socks. Each layer peeled away like a negotiation with myself. By the time I’m bare beneath the too bright ceiling light, I feel exposed in ways that have nothing to do with skin.

My body still holds the sun from last weekend—Vincent had insisted we take the kids to the beach. I lathered everybody with SPF 50, and I still came home golden. There’s a tiny scar beneath my left breast—an old surgical correction from a time I don’t talk about. The kind of wound that never needed explaining, because I’ve become the kind of woman who leaves no room for the question. My hair hangs loose, ash-blonde and curled at the ends. I twirl a strand around my finger until it slips away.

I look like a woman with no loose threads. I am a woman with no loose threads. Because I made damn sure of it. Because if I come undone, the too-muchness will spill. It always does. Too much heart. Too much history. Too much heat in my blood. Even my DNA refuses to dilute. Haitian. French, American. Creole. All of it. None of it. Too foreign for here. Too fractured for there.

I speak every language of the places I’ve called home, and still— I’m fluent in exile. In every room, I used to translate myself into something smaller.

More careful. More palatable. Because I learned early: belonging has a price, and it’s always paid in silence. I inherited my father’s French. I learned English for my mother, to belong in her world of politeness and Target sales. But I chose Creole for the parts of me that still long for home.

Not just the place. The essence of it. The salt. The smoke. The music that lived in my bones before I ever understood the feelings behind it. I fell in love with words untranslatable in most languages, with intonations and accents that vary from town to town. I kept that love alive despite it all because Haiti, broken and burning as it is, deserves sons and daughters who don’t look away. Even if it looked away from me. Even if it gave me away.

I wasn’t born with the melanin that would’ve made being who I am easier. My skin passes in airport lobbies, department stores, in the way strangers talk to me like I belong… I’ve been mistaken as white more times than I can count. Almost everything about me is misleading—my voice, my tone, my smile. Everything but my name and my blood.

I carry my father’s shape—broad, deliberate, imposing. Jacques Saint-Surain might never have read bedtime stories or kissed scraped knees, but he taught me power. How to wear it. How to wield it. How to silence a room without raising your voice.

The rest, I learned alone. Quietly. Painfully. My mother, Deborah, taught me less. An American expat who fell in love with Haitian aesthetics and left Kansas like it had personally betrayed her. She floated through my childhood like an aftertaste —beautiful, weightless, mostly absent.

She never noticed the bleeding under my surface. Never asked why I flinched at certain tones or learned to read a room before I could read books. She smiled a lot. That was her thing. Even when things were falling apart—especially then.

I learned early that if you’re good at smiling, people stop asking questions. I’ve used mine so much I don’t even know what’s underneath it anymore. There’s so much I haven’t told Vincent. Not because I don’t trust him, but because I do.

Because I know that once you place something heavy in someone else’s hands, they either carry it with you or drop it without meaning to. And I can’t bear to watch it fall.

He doesn’t know about the first time I stopped eating. Not really. He knows I lost weight in college. Thinks it was stress, midterms, bad food. He didn’t know that control was the only thing that made my body feel like mine.

That I used to count crackers. That celery and black coffee were more punishment than nourishment. I hated compliments. That I still do. He didn’t know I slept with the light on until I was twenty-five. That even now, if the house creaks wrong, I walk the halls like I’m the monster I’m trying to keep out. Like I’m the one who needs locking in. He doesn’t know about him. Not really. Not what it felt like. Not how long it lasted. Not how the shame rooted itself under my skin and stayed like it paid rent.

He knew there was someone before him. He knows about Fabien—his name, at least—and the ghost of his voice that still haunts the back of my skull. But he doesn’t know the shape of the damage. Doesn’t know how deep it runs.

He doesn’t know that sometimes, when he kisses the back of my neck too softly, I still flinch. Not because of him— because muscle memory is a cruel, loyal thing. Because my body still startles at kindness. Because even when the brain insists we’re fine now, the body keeps receipts.

He doesn’t know that I still fantasize about disappearing. Not dramatically. No blaze of glory, no farewell note. Just quietly—like vapor slipping through a cracked window. A drive with no destination. No return. No forwarding address. He doesn’t know that motherhood saved me,-stitched me back together when I was barely more than fragments, and sometimes I resent it for that. Because I love our kids more than my own pulse, but some days being their anchor feels like drowning in slow motion. Like I have to smile through the weight. Float for everyone else while something in me quietly sinks.

He doesn’t know how many times I rehearse my smile before I walk through the front door. How many versions of “ I’m okay” I practice in the mirror until it sounds like truth. Looked like the truth. Passed as human.

And he doesn’t know that even now, when I stare at my reflection too long, I see her. My biological perpetrator. I inherited her curves. Her skin tone. But everything else? Father. Eyes. Lips. Even my accent. Even now, after all this time, all this distance—I can’t escape them. Can’t scrub their choices from my DNA. Can’t look in the mirror without seeing a legacy I didn’t ask to carry. They follow me with every breath I take, even though I left years ago, carrying a wound too large for my chest to contain.

My genitors chose to stand tall while stepping over my wreckage. Chose silence. Chose their names over my voice. It wasn’t just betrayal. It was abandonment in tailored suits. A eulogy without a funeral. He broke me. And they broke what was left. Because blaming the girl was easier.

That day rewired me. Fractured my nervous system into landmines and false alarms. Now I live by perimeter checks, control over time, over texture, over breath. My body. Their bodies.

Sex? I try. God, I try. But my mind won’t slip its leash. Won’t soften. There’s no melt. No unravel. Not how others describe it. I don’t crave that tenderness. I map out my surroundings as foreplay, the nearest door, if the windows are at ground level, and how many steps away the coat rack is. Even in bed, I build watchtowers where others build trust.

I tried to explain it once. Years ago. To a therapist in Montreal, a basement office with plants that looked too alive to be real, too hopeful for me. It was near the end of McGill, when I thought maybe I was ready to lay it all down on someone else, just a little. She used words like trauma. Executive dysfunction. Repressed memory. Said my symptoms made sense. Said I was dissociating.

She kept looking at me like I was fragile. Like I might crack if she pressed too hard. I never went back after session three. I didn’t need her vocabulary. I already had all the words. What I needed was silence. Structure. A world I could mold into something manageable. A life with hard edges and clear rules.

I needed clean lines. Rooms that stayed the way I left them. A body that obeyed. I needed a story I could live inside—one where I wasn’t the girl who got hurt, wasn’t the girl who froze and folded. One where I got to decide how the ending went. So I locked that part of me away. Taped over the cracks. Painted the walls.

And that never-ending voice in my head—planning, calculating, overthinking, dissecting every corner of my life, reordering every moment by urgency, by danger, by shame—It’s the price I pay to stay upright. The lock I turned to keep the old version of me from crawling back into the light.

I dimmed the lights, walked to the bed, and curled up on top of the sheets. My phone was still playing that one song in a loop, a soft, persistent hum that had woven itself into the corners of the room. I hadn’t moved in what felt like hours, half-undressed on top of the comforter, the room dim except for the soft halo of hallway light pooling beneath the door. My limbs felt weighted. The unmistakable sound of keys in the bowl should have been reason enough for me to move, to shake off the inertia, but these footsteps were ones I’d recognize even in the noisiest crowd. He was home.

The bedroom door creaked open like it always did, even after all his promises to oil the hinges. Vincent stepped inside, hoodie unzipped, curls mussed from sleep he clearly hadn’t found. His eyes scanned the room, his eyes landed on my half-naked frame..

“Well. You look like a haunted French painting.”

He walked closer, scanning me like he already knew. Like whatever weight I was carrying had been humming in the walls since he left.

“I knew you were in your head,” he murmured, then climbed in without another word, wrapping around me like he’d been born knowing how. No questions. No commentary. Just his hand at the small of my back, warm and steady, drawing soft, aimless shapes like he had all the time in the world.

A spiral. A star. A wordless mantra written in skin. I didn’t answer. Just let my eyes fall shut. The weight in my chest didn’t lift, but it shifted— became something I didn’t have to carry alone. He kept tracing slow, patient lines across my skin. Not asking anything of me. Slowly, my mind went still. No spirals. No alarms. Just quiet. I let his hands and his breath lull me to sleep.

When I woke up, sunlight was already bleeding through the blinds. Unapologetic golden light, slicing across the sheets like it owned the room. The house was still quiet. No cartoons. No tiny feet thundering down the hallway. Just warmth. Stillness. That rare hum of a world not yet demanding anything from me.

Vincent’s arm was still draped across my waist. One leg tangled with mine like he didn’t care where I ended and he began. I let myself stay there. I traced the grain of his forearm with a fingertip, barely touching. Felt the slow rise and fall of his chest against my back. The soft twitch of his fingers, caught in some dream he didn’t want to leave.

He stirred, just enough to tighten his hold. His voice, rough and half-asleep, drifted into my hair.

“If you’re about to disappear again, please, leave a note this time...”

I snorted involuntarily. He cracked one eye open behind me, already smirking.

“You smell like strawberries and floor cleaner,” he murmured. “But like… in a hot way.”

I rolled my eyes but didn’t pull away.

“You got in at three in the morning.”

“You left the lights on. I took it as a romantic gesture.”

“Or I forgot to turn them off.”

He propped himself up on one elbow, eyes clearing, softening. That lazy, golden-hour look he wore better than anyone.

“You okay?” he asked

I didn’t answer right away. The truth was somewhere between “I’m fine” and “I was spiraling because I wanted to see how long I could make it without my meds.” So I reached for his hand instead.

“So….?,” he pushed.

I didn’t respond. I didn’t have the energy to dress it up or down. He reached out, tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear, then let his hand rest gently at my jaw. His thumb brushed just beneath my eye. The words were there—jammed behind my teeth, too raw to speak aloud. So instead, I kissed him, pulled the blanket up and over both of us like a shield. Outside, the world was already spinning. But in here, just for a moment, I could still pretend this was enough.

And he let me.

By 6:45 a.m., the kids are fed, bathed, dressed, and waiting at the door—tiny soldiers of routine, smelling of soap and cereal. I let myself linger, stealing ten more minutes before I put my armor back on. Ten minutes to memorize the curve of their laughter, the spill of their questions, the way they still believe the world will keep them. But safety is a fairytale in a world like mine. A fragile fable stitched from hope and denial.

We had the good touch/bad touch conversation before the school brochures said it was “age appropriate.” I made flashcards. We role-played scenarios. I taught her how to scream—with her whole body, from the diaphragm. How to make it sound like survival, not panic. I taught her how to kick a knee backward, how to twist and break a wrist grip. How to run. How to lie. How to disarm with silence or noise. How to survive when no one comes. Situational awareness turned into muscle memory. Reflex. Instinct. Second nature. But beneath it all, a quiet prayer that she never needs any of it, that her world would be kinder than mine was.

I kiss their foreheads at the threshold, scan the street before unlocking the car. Seatbelts click. My hands are steady on the wheel, I look like any other mother, doing the morning drop-off. I keep things cheerful. Smiles. Light jokes. Performative warmth—just enough to pass for approachable. I give the other parents a window, an opening, a curated crack they can peer through. A chance for human contact, even if it’s mostly theater. None of them ever really takes it. I suspect they find me… unnerving. Too crisp. Too correct. Like they’re not sure whether I’m going to offer them banana bread or run a background check on their entire family.

But I try. I show up. Bake sales. PTA performances. Hallway duty. Lunch monitoring. I sign every form. Pack every snack. Respond to every email before noon. Not for me. For them. So they can have what I didn’t: A mother who shows up. A family that looks functional, even if it’s held together with wire, caffeine, and sheer willpower.

Drop-off is ritual chaos. Parents running late. Kids clinging to legs. Forgotten lunchboxes. Mascara smudged. Voices tight. Eyes haunted. We all play our part. But one mother always stands out.

Every time I see her, she looks like she’s hanging on by a single thread.. Her children? Perfect. Crisp uniforms. Braided hair. I’ve tried talking to her a few times. Smiled, joked about the commute, about kids who wander where they shouldn’t. Nothing heavy, nothing prying. I even practiced my “friendly mom” voice in the mirror—softened it, rounded the edges, sanded myself down until I sounded less like a warning sign and more like a welcome mat.

Didn’t work.

She dodged every effort. Faked phone calls. Slipped out mid-sentence. Conjured sudden errands. I got the message. She’s not interested. Not in friendship. Not in proximity. Now I just wave.

The school chaos still rang in my ears—a fading, distant hum. Ghost static on the frequency of motherhood. The kind you only notice once the door clicks shut and the engine rumbles to life. In here, there was only the low purr of the motor and the metronomic click of the turn signal. Left. Right. Left again. A breath I could finally inhale.

This in-between. I’ve always loved it. Me, dissolving into motion. Retreating into the quiet rhythm of elsewhere... I parked two blocks from the office, like I always do. Even with a reserved spot waiting, I needed the ritual. I needed the walk to shed the residue of cereal bowls and ready-made lunchboxes, of small hands tugging at my bag, of voices calling Mommy as if it were both a name and a leash.

The walk made me smooth again. Contained. Capable. Step by step, I became who I had to be—post-Fabien: precise, unreadable, surgically competent.

Family law wasn’t my first choice. I used to fantasize in glass towers, skyline views stretching like promises—corporate litigation, black suits, whispered power plays across steel conference tables. Succession strategy. Empire-building. I wanted it all. Before I turned my rage into something productive, something not dictated by a controlling father.

I built something out of ashes and became an attorney. Not to rewrite my own past, but to carve out a future for others like me. Yesterday’s introspective drunkenness had cracked open a door I thought was sealed tight. Going back to the young man still sitting across from me took more effort than I expected.

My pen moved like muscle memory. Restraining order—routine. Emergency housing—filed. Therapy referral—printed and stamped. When he left, I stood by the window and watched him vanish into the smear of the city.

The drive to the school was instinct. Left at the bakery with the crooked pane. Right at the stop sign that slouched like it was done trying to save anyone. familiar neighborhood unfolded like a script I’d read too many times—lawns clipped with military precision, driveways chalked with half-erased dreams, minivans parked like footnotes. A world so tidy, it bordered on cruelty. As if healing meant matching patio furniture and holiday wreaths. The parking lot rang with chaos. Shrieks. Scuffed sneakers. Backpacks flung like debris from tiny hurricanes. A soccer ball rolled beneath a minivan.

Here, the noise made sense. Here, tears didn’t need translation. I stepped through the front doors— heels sharp on linoleum, past corkboards bleeding with construction paper collages, lost mitten signs, and PTA flyers that pretended everything was just fine. glue sticks. Dry paint. Memory wrapped in sugar and solvents. I followed the sound—that chaotic pitch only children and grief can reach. It led me to the art room.

And there he was.

Vincent.

Exactly where I knew he’d be—kneeling beside a puddle of acrylic carnage, his clothes a battlefield of color. Streaks of blue and green ribboned across his jeans, like someone had tried to paint forgiveness onto him and gave up halfway. Something violently orange clawed across his cheekbone, and his apron—bless it—was losing a heroic but futile war against the chaos. His hoodie was splattered beyond redemption, and the curly hair twisted into a high man bun looked like it had survived a small but determined riot.

The man looked like he’d been mugged by a Jackson Pollock exhibit. The classroom looked worse.

“It’s abstract expressionism.”

He said without turning, his voice warm, worn in. I leaned against the doorway, arms crossed.

“It looks like you lost a fight with your paintbrush.”

He turned. Grinning. Those goddamn dimples, deep enough to tuck secrets into, or hide inside for a few minutes when the world got too loud.

“That too,” he said. And winked.

God help me, I almost smiled. Not the courtroom kind. The real kind. The kind with teeth and breath and warmth behind it. He crossed the room in three long strides and wrapped me in an unapologetic hug. I stiffened, just a breath, eyes catching on the smear of cobalt blue hovering inches from my cream blazer like a promise and a threat. But I let him hold me. Let him press warmth and paint and possibility into the sterile shield I’d wrapped around myself just to make it through the day.

I kissed him slowly, like I was re-learning how. He tasted like burnt coffee and peppermint gum. Like late nights and stubborn hope. His hand lingered at my waist, anchoring me to the moment like he knew I had a habit of drifting.

“Rough day?”

His voice was quiet, edged with knowing. He looked at me the way he looked at blank canvases— as if, if he studied long enough, he could paint the truth without shattering it.

“Nothing I couldn’t file under ‘routine,’” I said, brushing a streak of green from his jaw with my thumb—like it mattered, like I hadn’t stared down real monsters just hours ago. Jessica barreled in, radiant and reckless, glitter clinging to every inch of her like static joy. Maxime followed close behind, eyebrows stiff with glue that caught the light like frozen sweat. Tiny hurricanes with limbs. I opened my mouth—ready to launch into the usual litany: The clothes. The glitter.

The goddamn industrial-strength glue—destined to live forever in my car seats, in the fibers of the carpet, in the corners of my nervous system. Vincent caught my eye with a disapproving glance that made me feel like a petulant child. I didn’t like it one bit. Still… I reigned in my mini heart attack.

I clenched my bag strap like it was a tourniquet for reality. Inhaled until my ribs protested. Counted backward from ten. Then again. Slower. I bit the inside of my cheek, let the copper bloom like an old, familiar grounding.

“Nobody is coming home or getting in my car like that.”

It sounded less… mean in my head. I pulled a zippered pouch from my tote like a peace offering. Held it out like an olive branch wrapped in wet wipes and compromise.

“I brought a change of clothes.”

I glanced at Vincent—stern.

“For you.”

Then at the kids—narrow-eyed, as if they were in on it.

“And because we agreed they can be messy in your presence… for them too.”

Vincent took the bag, easy as breath.Pressed a paint-smudged kiss to my temple.

“You’re learning,” he said, smile crooked.

“I’m coping,” I muttered.

My mouth cracked into something dangerously close to a smile. Vincent ushered the kids toward the cubbies, whistling a tune that couldn’t find a note to land on. I sank onto one of those too-small stools. Knees to chest, blazer creased—and watched the technicolor chaos swirl like a storm with no interest in damage control. In here, control wasn’t expected. It was optional. Maybe even irrelevant.

The ride home was a symphony of nonsense—chatter bouncing off the windows like rubber balls. The car smelled like air freshener, wet glue, and something I couldn’t name. A streak of yellow paint smeared across the window—just out of reach, pulsing in my periphery like a warning light. My eye twitched. Every nerve begged for a wipe. But I didn’t reach for it.

Not with Vincent watching. Not with the kids in the backseat. I made a mental note.

They exploded through the front door of our small Craftsman like a living, shrieking weather system—trailing shoes, jackets, and half-buttoned second outfits like reverse breadcrumbs. Socks collapsed in heaps across the hardwood. Vincent didn’t stop them. I gave him a look sharp enough to cut. He shrugged, all soft deflection and that maddening, lopsided grin. Like, mess was charming when it came with giggles and glitter stains. I sighed. Bit my lip. Said nothing. Swallowed the urge. Again.

Dinner was mushroom risotto and roasted carrots—one of the few meals we could all pretend to love at the same time, and the only way to get the kids to eat vegetables. Vincent cooked barefoot, humming low, gliding through the warm kitchen. A scratchy soul album played from the speaker in the corner. I set the table and picked carrot peels from the floor. Jessica and Maxime fought over the chipped plate again. Vincent called it lucky. I called it an ER visit waiting to happen. I watched Maxime sneak his sister's carrots while she traded him her broccoli. I found myself smiling at these little things through the night, their banter about who goes first in the bathroom, comparing pajamas, and fighting over bedtime stories.

They were now starfished under a mountain of storybooks, pages splayed like wings mid-flutter. Vincent and I collapsed onto the couch, our bodies sinking into the fabric as if it might hold us together, as if it could anchor the fragments of me I’d left scattered throughout the day. He reached for me, pulled me close, and I let myself relax. My mind ran its usual circuits until it circled back to last night’s spiral.

“Where’d you go just now?” he asked, voice low, careful.

I hesitated, swallowing the weight lodged at the base of my throat since last night. “Nowhere,” He didn’t push. He didn’t speak. Just let his thumb trace slow, deliberate circles against my hand, sketching me back into my own body.

“Did you take your meds?”

I nodded. He pulled me tighter, chin finding the crown of my head.

“What exactly is weighing on you then?”

I didn’t know, or maybe I did, and I wasn’t ready for where the conversation would lead. I wanted to share. I wanted to make it simple. Instead, I closed my eyes, pressing my face into his shoulder, breathing in paint, warmth, and the quiet strength that lived in his skin.

“That bad, huh?” he murmured. “Did you do anything we should be worried about, bunny?”

I lifted my gaze to him—paint smudged on his jaw, a loose curl escaping the man bun he always claimed to hate. His brown eyes were steady, soft, weathered by time and care. The gentlest man I had ever known. The only one who never mistook me for something broken that needed fixing.

“Nope. Just too much to drink last night, skipped my meds, let my mind wander into some… unpleasant corners.”

I tugged him up, pulled him toward the bedroom. I undressed slowly, each piece falling like a layer of the day I didn’t want anymore. Vincent stayed across the room, watching with that unhurried grace he saved for brushstrokes.

He lifted his shirt over his head, paint-flecked cotton catching before it gave way. Warm brown skin, chest and arms still dusted with forgotten color—his body a living canvas. His hair unraveled, curls spilling loose and untamed. And still, his eyes never left mine.

"You okay?” His voice was low, anchored.

I nodded. Slower this time.

“Yeah,” I lied.

He didn’t call me on it. Just crossed the room, reached for my face. His thumb skimmed my temple, “Come here.”

I stepped into the space he made for me. Melted into it. I fought to focus on him instead of the potential mess in the room, or the paint that might stain the ivory sheets if we didn’t hit the shower first. All of that was forgotten the moment he dropped to his knees.

His mouth found the inside of my thigh, the sharp edge of my hipbone, the hollow just beneath my navel. I always forget—until he doesn’t. God, I love him!

He rose in one smooth motion, pressing me back onto the bed. Paint still clung to his chest, streaks of sienna and ochre smudging against my skin. He kissed down the length of me.

I let my head fall back against the pillow, eyes fluttering shut. Not from performance. Not to disappear. But because this was where I could—finally—release the white-knuckled grip on consciousness.

His lips ghosted across my ribcage, pausing on each place I’d forgotten was mine. He lingered at my chest, one hand sliding up to cradle me with all the reverence of a prayer. My fingers wove through his loose curls—soft, unruly threads slipping like quiet confessions between my knuckles.

He groaned low against my skin, his tongue tracing the center of me, speaking every unsaid word when my breath caught, thighs curling like fragile vines around his shoulders, he stayed. Held me open. One sharp flick—an electric pulse—and every last shard of reason crumbled to ash. I gasped, spine arching, one hand tangled in his hair, the other clutching the sheets—helpless, undone. He anchored me—mouth and hands—slow, deliberate, guiding me off the edge of a cliff I never saw coming.

I waited for a climax that never came, chased it, then crashed, my eyes shut for a far less thrilling reason. Frustration swelled, bitter and bright, as my own body folded in on itself.

Not again.

I couldn’t.

Couldn’t climb that edge. Couldn’t let go. And my mind—traitor and tyrant—pounced. My breath caught, sharp and punishing, and my voice—mine—morphed into his.

Fabien.

That venomous whisper, curling like smoke through my lungs. Not enough. Not a real woman. Shame clenched tight, a frostbite I’d never fully thaw, it didn’t matter that I was loved, Safe. The damage was cellular. Because sometimes your past still owns the deed to your body, even when someone else is holding you gently. Vincent saw it. Always did.

My fractures spoke in a language only he could read. He reached for the nightstand. His hand found the black ribbon. He lifted it slowly, tying it around my wrist, grounding me in the moment, a ritual more intimate than any kiss or touch. The silk brushed my skin like a second heartbeat, a counterpoint to the old ghosts that clawed from inside me.

I let the tremor run through me, let him hold the fragments of me too fragile to speak. His other hand moved over my back, slow, deliberate, drawing patterns that reminded me I existed outside the prison of memory, that my body could be mine again, even if only in increments. Every brush of his fingers was an unspoken pledge, an insistence that my scars were not a verdict, that desire could be reclaimed without shame

“Close your eyes,” I obeyed—no questions, no hesitation. He tied another ribbon, brushing a kiss along the hollow of my nose as the world darkened around me.

“You know what’s coming?” His voice drifted down my spine.

“No,” I breathed.

“Good.” A soft kiss pressed to my wrist. “Then all you have to do is feel.”

His breath shuddered against my collarbone. “No fight tonight?”

“None,” I whispered. “I’m yours, however you want me.”

His breath caught, weight shifted. He laid me back like a canvas, fingers skimming down my sternum, light as breath, as if sketching the outline of something sacred.

I held still. His mouth followed, lips tracing the same path with aching precision—as if he could kiss the past out of me, as if each press was a vow. Lower. Slower. Until he hovered at the edge of me, that impossible stillness, his breath fanning me into an agonizing precipice, waiting for permission. I arched, a silent plea written in the taut line of my hips. He answered with a single, deliberate stroke of his tongue. Another, then another until I lost count… I reached—grasping at sheets, at the air, at anything that could hold me steady while he dismantled me.

“Stay with me, doll,” he murmured, voice thick with reverence. He didn’t rush. Didn’t try to make me come. He waited for it to arrive. And when it did, it wasn’t loud. It was a rupture. A breaking open. Not just pleasure—but something older. Deeper. Fear melting into heat. Shame transmuted. A sob disguised as release. It tore through me in waves, and through each one, he stayed—guiding, grounding, whispering soft liturgy:

“That’s it.”

“You’re doing so good.”

My body shook under his praise. He held me at the edge of destruction, letting me ride the high. Only when I was spent—shattered in a way that remade me—did he climb my body with the same quiet grace that undid it. He kissed the ribbon over my eyes, pressed his mouth to my cheek, my temple, my jaw. Benediction made of skin. Then reached down, lining himself up—breath catching against my throat.

“No more teasing?” I joked, voice sharp with false bravado.

He chuckled, low, deliberate. “No,” he said, heat curling around the word like smoke in a closed room. “Tonight, I fuck you like your whole being belongs to me.”

And he did. He sank into me in one deep, claiming thrust that emptied my lungs and stilled the whole damn world. His rhythm wasn’t reckless—it was deliberate. Cruel in its care. Every stroke a conversation, every movement a promise. He moved like a man who had studied every part of me and still wanted all of it, who could see every fracture and still ache to inhabit it.

And I let him. Not because I had to. Not because I was his. But because I wanted to.

His voice, his hands, the slow, perfect weight of him inside me—it pulled me beyond memory, beyond fear, beyond everything I had thought I carried alone. For once, my body wasn’t mine to defend. It was mine to surrender. And surrender, in his arms, was freedom. He moved like a man who had studied every part of me and still wanted all of it, who could see every fracture and still ache to inhabit it.

And I let him. Not because I had to. Not because I was his. But because I wanted to.

“Focus on my voice,” he whispered, breath sliding warm and dark along the shell of my ear. “I’m going to narrate every goddamn thing I do to you. I want you to hear what you do to me.”

He mapped me in colorful language, tracing my edges with sentences that felt like blasphemy, speaking my body into something sacred. Each gasp, a punctuation, each moan a verse. My mind scattered, trying to catch the pieces, but failing beautifully. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t do anything but feel. Fists clenched the sheets like prayer beads, grounding me to this—To him. Finally, my mind is quiet. No static. No alarms. Just breathe. Heat. Hands. Voice. His fingers dug into my hips like anchors, steadying me as the tide inched higher. His mouth never stopped moving. Neither did his voice.

“So fucking perfect.”

“Taking all of me.”

“Look at you.”

“That’s it.”

I shattered more than once, but he kept going, pushing past every place I thought was my limit, until I was wrecked in a way that felt like being rebuilt. Gone was Fabien’s voice, that venom-laced whisper telling me I was not enough. Not a real woman. He used to say I was cold. Frigid. Like my body needed fixing. Like my pleasure was a malfunction.

But with Vincent?

I burned. And bloomed. Yes, I had to work for my peaks, chase them through the dark corridors of memories and fear. But Vincent knew every crooked hallway, every locked door, every rusted gate. He guided me through them, whispered me past the shadows, and made me feel—finally—that being whole wasn’t an impossible assignment. He never asked for ease. He asked for honesty. And I gave it to him in gasps and shudders and whimpers.

He untied the ribbon last. Like undoing a spell, he then kissed my eyes as they blinked open, held me as if he were afraid I’d float away. He held me like I was breath and storm and stardust. Like I wasn’t something to fix. Just something to feel. The weight of the day bled out into the sheets, and I let it. I didn’t care if they stayed clean. I didn’t care about the mess. I just wanted this… Him a little longer.