“It wasn’t my fault!”
The second the words left his mouth, silence swallowed the room.
Because somewhere deep down, we both knew how ugly they sounded.
I grabbed my robe from the chair and wrapped it around myself like armor.
“My mother died six months after that explosion,” I said quietly.
Callahan froze.
The police had called it complications from smoke inhalation.
But I remembered the truth:
she had simply stopped wanting to live.
Every morning after the fire, she sat beside my hospital bed staring at my bandages with hollow eyes full of guilt.
As if she blamed herself for surviving.
“You never told me that,” Callahan whispered.
“You never told me your father bought silence with blood money.”
His mouth opened.
Closed.
Then, finally:
“He’s dead now.”
The words should have comforted me.
Instead, rage crawled higher inside my chest.
Because dead men never apologize.
I moved toward the apartment door blindly through tears.
Callahan heard the movement immediately.
“Merritt, please don’t leave.”
“You lied to me.”
“I was terrified.”
“Of what?” I snapped. “That I’d see your family the same way everyone saw me after the fire? Damaged? Ruined?”
