Page 92 of Cold Mercy

Her voice is quiet now, defeated.

“You want to go to war?” She opens the door slowly, deliberately.

“You have until tomorrow to end it. If you don’t, I tell her everything. And you can watch her break all over again.”

She steps out.

“And one more thing. Don't kid yourself. She won’t forgive you for what you did. Not when she hears the truth. Don’t test me with this; I’m not losing my badge because you fell for the wrong girl,” she adds.

The door slams, and her footsteps fade.

And for the first time in years, I feel like I’m standing on a battlefield with no weapon, no backup, just the crushing weight of knowing that regardless of what choice I make tomorrow, I lose her.

I crossed the line long before Grace confronted me, long before she found Sophia in that hospital room, long before I realized my voice changes whenever I say her name. The line wasn’t crossed when I stepped into Sophia’s life pretending to be someone else, or when I let myself enjoy the way she talks to me, fights with me, softens around me. I crossed it the moment I understood, with terrifying clarity, that I would burn my world down before I let hers be touched.

CHAPTER 21

SOPHIA

He just…walked out. Like leaving was the simplest solution in the world, like all he had to do was step through the door, and he could leave the mess I made of everything behind him.

And maybe I deserve that. Maybe I deserved the way the silence swallowed the house the moment he was gone. Nothing between us is ever simple, and still…I want him. Not in the soft, naive way I once wanted Noah. This feels like wanting oxygen after drowning.

Hold your breath, count to ten. He will never come back again.

For months, Thomas has been the anchor I reached for, even while convincing myself I wasn’t reaching for anyone. He doesn’t know how many times he saved me without ever touching me. He doesn’t know that if not for him, I would have slipped under completely. That I wouldn’t have survived the truth about the man I once thought I’d die for. He built a world I didn’t know I could still live in, and now I can’t imagine stepping out of it.

Play the part, build the home. You were always on your own.

Because he’s the kind of man you tell you’re angry at the universe, and he’ll look at the universe like it’s the one that needs to explain itself. He’ll stand between you and anything that hurts, even when you’re the one hurting yourself.

I know I pushed him away in the beginning. I know I told him I wasn’t ready, that I was broken. But I just needed time, I needed to know that the ground wasn't going to open up under me again. And now that I'm finally standing steady, now that I'm finally ready to let him in...he decides he needs space?

I don't believe it. I can't believe it.

You don't look at someone the way he looked at me in that club if you feel smothered. You don't kiss someone like they're your last breath if you want your ‘actual life’ back. Something changed, something shifted behind his eyes this morning, and I don't know if it's because he finally realized I’m too much trouble to keep. But I refuse to believe that everything we built in this silence meant nothing to him.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. You’ve been blind for way too long. You didn’t see the dead man’s lie, now you watch the living die.

I’ve already sent him several texts, each one more pathetic than the last. Apologies repeated in different words, questions about whether he’s okay, reassurances that I didn’t mean anything bad, that I wasn’t trying to push him, that I’m sorry again and again. I read them back and cringe at myself.

He hasn’t replied, not one message.

Scraps of love, crumbs of care. Reaching out to empty air. You begged your parents just to stay, now watch him walk away.

And this, this is where my mind turns against me, where the old patterns drag me by the hair into the past I promised myself I’d never revisit.

When I was seventeen, I got a tattoo, a small butterfly inked into my ribs beneath my breast. Not out of rebellion or aesthetics, I just needed a symbol of survival, something permanent etched into my skin to remind myself. That even in that miserable house with a mother drowning in her demons, I could still choose something that belonged only to me.

It hurt more than I expected, and when Noah died, the memory of that pain came back not as art, but as a twisted form of relief. I didn’t go back to the tattoo studio. I went to the bathroom floor with a razor blade.

Welcome home, we missed you so. One quick slice and let it go.

The cuts were shallow at first. Just enough to make my mind focus on something besides the grief ripping me apart from the inside. When that stopped being enough, I pressed knives to my stomach, the sharpest I could find, daring myself to do it. Wondering how deep I’d have to go to feel something clean and absolute again. I just wanted the world to stop crushing me long enough for me to breathe.

When it wasn’t that, it was alcohol, even though I’d once hated even the smell of it. My mother had drowned herself in it for years, and I swore I’d never become her. But grief made a liar out of me, too. Tonight, the fear of losing Thomas is pulling at those familiar threads, unraveling me faster than I want to admit.

But my chest is tight, and my eyes won’t stop stinging, and the silence in the house feels like it’s screaming.