Chapter 6 Chapter 6

Torin didn't answer fast enough. That was the first thing my body understood, before my mind could dress it up in excuses or soften it into something survivable. The pause was small, barely more than a breath, but it opened between us like a crack in old glass—thin at first, then spreading before either one of us could stop it.

My fingers tightened around the duffel strap until the canvas bit into my palm. Torin stood in front of the door with his shoulders squared and his hands hanging empty at his sides. He looked too big for the room suddenly, too present, too familiar. The bruise along his jaw had deepened since Reif's fist had landed there, a dark bloom beneath his skin that should've made me reach for him. It would've before. I would've crossed the space without thinking, tipped his face toward the light, and fussed at him for letting someone hit him. Instead, I stared at the bruise and wondered how many times he'd looked at me with guilt sitting behind his eyes while I mistook it for exhaustion.

"Yes," he finally replied, his voice low enough that I almost missed it beneath the hum of the ceiling fan.

The word landed wrong. It should've helped. It should've meant something. He'd planned to tell me. There was supposed to be comfort in that, some tiny thread I could hold onto while everything else slipped through my fingers. There wasn't.

My hand loosened on the bag, and the strap slid against my palm. "When?" I asked, my voice flat.

Torin's jaw moved once, the muscle jumping near the bruise. His gaze dropped to the floor between us, where my shirt still lay crumpled beside the bed. That shirt had been on me three nights ago when he'd pulled me into his lap downstairs because Ginger had been yelling at one of the prospects for putting barbecue sauce in the wrong refrigerator. I remembered laughing into Torin's neck while his hand rested warm against my hip. Reif had been sitting at the bar that night, quiet for once, turning a bottle cap between his fingers. I'd thought he was bored. Now I wondered whether he'd been waiting for one of them to grow a spine.

"Marlowe," Torin murmured, reaching his hand out a fraction.

I looked away from the shirt, my posture locking. "When, Torin?"

His throat worked. "We were trying to find the right time," he muttered, his eyes tracking my face.

The right time. Something inside me went very still. It wasn't calm—not even close—but still in the way the ocean went flat before a storm rolled in and tore the shoreline apart.

I nodded slowly, my eyes burning as I looked around the room. The bed. The dresser. The framed photograph. His boots beside mine. My laptop still open on the desk with the half-written song sleeping on the screen, the cursor blinking patiently as though I might sit down and finish it after my life finished splitting in half.

"Was it going to be after dinner?" I asked, my voice softer than I expected. "Maybe after movie night? After we all sat downstairs and laughed with him again?"

Torin stepped forward, his leather vest shifting, then he stopped when my body moved back on instinct. The movement hit him. I saw it in the way his shoulders settled, as though something heavy had been placed across them. I hated that I noticed. I hated that I knew the exact shape of his pain.

"We didn't want to do it like this," he replied, his jaw flexing.

A laugh scraped out of me before I could stop it. There was no humor in it, and there was barely sound. "That is such a pretty way to make this about how badly it came out instead of what you did."

His eyes lifted to mine. For a second, neither of us spoke. Downstairs, a door slammed. Voices rose, then faded. The clubhouse kept breathing beneath us, full of the same people who'd known—the same people who'd watched me walk around smiling with a secret sewn into the walls around me.

I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth, trying to steady myself. Seven months. The number wouldn't leave me alone. Seven months of Torin's hand on the small of my back. Seven months of waking with his arm around my waist. Seven months of him kissing my temple when I got too quiet. Seven months of him asking me to trust that he had me. All that time, Reif had been my brother. All that time, Rook had known. My own twin had known. The thought made my knees feel weak, so I tightened my grip on the duffel again and forced my spine straight.

"Move," I told Torin, my tone final.

His face hardened, not with anger, but with something worse: panic dressed up as control. "Let me drive you somewhere," he requested, his knuckles cording.

I stared flatly at his face. He heard the absurdity the second it left his mouth. I saw the regret flicker across his features, quick and sharp.

"No," I replied, almost gently.

His brow pulled tight. "I don't want you leaving like this," he argued, blocking the frame.

"Of course you don't."

"Marlowe."

"You don't want me leaving angry," I countered, stepping closer. "You don't want me upset. You don't want me hurt. You didn't want me finding out in the yard. You didn't want Reif saying it before all of you decided the timing was perfect."

His mouth tightened into a hard line. I stepped even closer, close enough to see the faint red at the corner of his mouth where Reif had split the skin. "Do you hear yourself?"

Torin's eyes held mine. The room seemed to shrink around us. I could smell leather on him, engine oil faint beneath it, and the soap from his shower that morning—ordinary, familiar things that belonged to the life I'd thought we were living. My chest hurt so badly I've to breathe around it.

"You keep telling me what you didn't want," I whispered, looking directly at his lips. "Did anyone ever ask what I needed?"