True Affliction - Chapter 26

Warning: You won’t emotionally survive this book.

I didn’t move for a full heartbeat after the door slammed.

The silence that followed felt weighted, like the house had absorbed every word and was now holding them in its walls for later. My lungs remembered to work again in thin, cautious pulls. My fingers finally loosened around the shopping bag, the handles creasing my skin, and I took one careful step back.

Alex still hadn’t looked up.

He was exactly where he’d been, posture loose, face unreadable, gaze fixed on nothing as if thought itself had become a place he could disappear into. It terrified me, that stillness. I’d seen him in motion, I’d seen him hungry, I’d seen him furious, I’d seen him tender in that devastating, dangerous way he did tenderness.

But this was something else.

This was the part of him that didn’t need an audience.

I slipped inside properly, moving without sound, as if the hallway carpet had been laid for women trying not to be caught. I didn’t know why I was hiding. Maybe because if he saw me now, with that conversation still ringing in my ears, he would shut down completely. Or worse, he would flare, and I would find myself on the receiving end of the very thing he’d been biting back.

It was a good thing he hadn’t noticed me.

If he knew I’d heard James say those words. Alex did not like being witnessed when he wasn’t in control of what was seen.

My feet carried me down the corridor and into his study like I’d been summoned by the room itself. It felt warmer in here, quieter.

I set the shopping bag down on the desk and drew the box out, careful, reverent, as if I were placing an offering.

Black lacquer. Silver detailing. Heavy in my hands.

I thought of the journal in the drawer and felt that sharp spike of guilt again, fresh as a bruise. I didn’t open any drawers. I didn’t touch anything else. I just placed the gift neatly on the centre of his desk, where he couldn’t miss it, and stared at it for a second too long as if it might explain everything.

It didn’t.

I took a breath, slow, deliberate, the way I told my clients to. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Ground yourself. Name what you feel.

Confused. Uneasy. Curious, in the most dangerous way.

So Ella had a son.

The words sat in my mind like a stone.

Ella had a son, and somehow she’d forgotten him. Forgotten her child. Forgotten a whole person.

How did that happen?

And why had Alex used it like a weapon, like a threat that could cut James open where it would hurt most. I’m going to remind Ella about her son.

Remind.

Not tell.

Not reveal.

Remind.

As if the memory existed somewhere inside her already, buried under something thick and cruel.

Why had Ella forgotten?

What had happened to her, to them, to make a mother forget her own child?

And what had happened between Alex, James, and Andrea that made James say he needed them, like they were a drug. Like they were oxygen. Like he couldn’t function without the sickness.

My stomach turned. The pieces were there, sharp edges of a puzzle, but the image they made was too ugly to look at.

I rubbed my thumb over the corner of the box, my pulse still too fast, then forced myself to move.

He deserved to know I was home. Even if I wasn’t sure I deserved to ask what I wanted to ask.

I left the study and walked back down the hall, my steps cautious, my spine straight, like posture could be armour.

When I reached the living room doorway again, he was still there.

Exactly where I’d left him.

He hadn’t even shifted.

The lamp cast warm light across the side of his face, catching the line of his jaw, the faint shadow of stubble, the hard set of his mouth. His eyes were fixed somewhere ahead, but I didn’t think he was seeing the room at all. He looked like a man listening to a storm that existed inside him and no one else could hear.

I hesitated.

I could turn this into normal. I could say hello, ask if he wanted dinner, pretend the house hadn’t just held a conversation that had changed the shape of my understanding.

Or I could ask.

I could poke at the locked room.

Curiosity has consequences, baby.

My skin remembered the way he’d said it. The threat threaded through the tenderness. The fact he’d meant it.

I took another step in.

His eyes flicked to mine instantly.

So much for him not noticing.

His gaze pinned me, calm and sharp. And then his mouth moved, slow, controlled.

“Why did you slip inside?” he asked, voice low.

My heart jolted.

He didn’t sound surprised. He sounded amused, almost, but there was something hard under it. Something that dared me to lie.

“I didn’t want to interrupt,” I said, keeping my tone light because it was safer that way.

His eyes narrowed a fraction, and that was all it took to make my skin tighten.

“You didn’t interrupt,” he said. “Because you didn’t announce yourself.”

I swallowed. “I thought you hadn’t seen me.”

His mouth tipped at one corner, not a smile, not quite. “I knew you were there.”

I blinked, heat rising in my chest, equal parts relief and frustration. “You knew.”

“Mm.” He leaned back, slow, deliberate. “You’re not subtle, baby.”

I bristled. “I can be subtle.”

His gaze drifted over me, unhurried, as if he were taking stock. Coat still on. Bag no longer in my hand. My hair slightly wind-touched. My eyes too alert.

“You can be many things,” he murmured. “Subtle isn’t top of the list.”

There it was, the familiar Alex. The one who could disarm me with a look and make me want to fight him and kiss him in the same breath.

It gave me something to hold.

Strength, stupidly, from his certainty.

I stepped further into the room and stopped a few feet from him. Close enough that I could smell him, but not so close that he could touch and redirect.

“Why was James here?” I asked, voice steady.

His expression didn’t change. “Business.”

I didn’t blink. “No.”

The corner of his mouth twitched again, that almost smile now edged with warning. “No?”

“That didn’t sound like business.” My throat tightened but I forced the words out anyway. “It sounded like… history.”

His eyes sharpened. The temperature in the room shifted.

“Cait,” he said softly, and my name on his tongue felt like a hand closing round my wrist.

I held my ground. “Ella has a son.”

A beat of stillness.

His jaw tightened once.

He didn’t look away, but something in his eyes moved, a flicker of old pain, quick as lightning.

“Yes,” he said, clipped.

My pulse hammered. “Why did you tell James you’d remind her of her son?”

His gaze turned darker, the blue deepening, the humour disappearing as if it had never existed.

“Because James doesn’t get to keep taking things from her,” he said, voice flat, controlled. “Not anymore.”

“But why has she forgotten?” I pressed, unable to stop now, the questions spilling out with their own momentum. “How does a woman forget her own child? What happened, Alex?”

His eyes held mine. Unreadable. Impossibly guarded.

“What did you hear?” he asked quietly.

My stomach dropped.

He’d known. He’d known exactly what I’d done, exactly what I’d overheard, and he’d let me walk around with it anyway.

I forced the truth out. “Enough to know it wasn’t business.”

His gaze stayed on me, heavy, assessing, like he was deciding whether I deserved the truth or whether I would break under it.

Then he stood.

Slowly.

And the room recalibrated around him, around his height, his presence, his gravity.

He took one step closer. Not touching. Just close enough that my body reacted anyway, traitorous, breath hitching.

“You want answers,” he murmured.

“Yes.”

His eyes dipped to my mouth and back to my eyes. “You’re asking the wrong man.”

“No,” I said, and my voice surprised me with how firm it sounded. “I’m asking the only man who can tell me.”

The air between us tightened, hot and sharp.

He stared at me for a long moment, so long my skin prickled, my spine begging me to back away.

Then he spoke, low, dangerous calm.

“If you open this door, baby,” he said, voice like velvet over steel, “you don’t get to decide when it closes.”

I swallowed, my heart in my throat.

“I’m already in the house,” I whispered.

And for the first time since I’d walked in, something cracked in his expression. Not softness. Not sadness. Something closer to grim acknowledgement.

He exhaled once, slow.

“Sit down,” he said.

It was a command.

And this time, I didn’t fight it.

Because I’d asked.

And he was finally, finally about to answer.

My darlings,

I know this chapter was shorter than usual, and I am so sorry to leave you wanting more. But I promise you, the rest is pouring out of me as we speak. The next part is unfolding beautifully, and I cannot wait to place it in your hands.

Thank you for staying with me, for loving these characters as fiercely as I do, and for being the most incredible readers I could ever wish for.

All my love, always.

A💋