Part 2Erasing The Man Who Broke Me

Killian and I were meant to be. Our mothers, best friends who practically raised us together, had joked about our marriage since we were toddlers. We grew up believing we were one of those couples destined to share a life—a relationship that was simply fait accompli.

Until the bottom fell out of the world.

My father’s business collapsed, he killed himself, and my mother and I were forced to move into the North family home.

The day Killian finally confessed his love, the day we stood hand-in-hand while our parents laughed, musing over baby names, was the same day his mother found my mother’s sonogram.

The father of the baby was Killian's father, Mr. Alistair North.

The family shattered. The screaming and shouting ended only when Killian’s mother suffered a massive stroke.

At the funeral, I stood under the towering oak tree, watching Killian's solitary, brittle silhouette. For the first time, I felt a toxic shame for our shared history.

Killian, his eyes burning red, charged at my mother. I threw myself in front of her, taking the blow—a piece of broken glass that sliced a gouge in my shoulder.

In that moment, I thought: If I disappeared, would Killian be less broken?

But when I turned, I fell into his arms instead. His voice was a rusty rasp, scraped raw like metal on stone.

“It’s not your fault, Cassidy.”

“Let’s leave here. Let’s go.”

We ran. We found a place so far away the family shame couldn't reach us. To survive, Killian worked himself to the bone—hauling cement, busing tables. His hands were a mess of bloody blisters and frostbite. During the worst times, we shared a single cup of instant noodles in a cramped, freezing studio apartment, listening to the wind threaten to rip the glass out of the window frame.

We never spoke. We never answered the family’s calls that lit up the cheap Nokia phone.

“We don’t have a home anymore, Cass,” he’d whispered, pulling me close. “We are each other’s home.”

I sat by the small, contained fire until the last ashes had cooled and the sky outside was streaked with the pale gray of dawn.

Then, Killian called.

“I’m sending you an address. Get over here. She wants to meet you.”

She was the girl, Talia.

I answered calmly. “Okay.”

When I arrived at the location, the street was deserted. Just as I started to dial Killian’s number, a blur of motion and screaming tires erupted.

The impact was chaos. My sedan was a pinball, slammed into and ricocheting off several vehicles. Finally, a thick, viscous warmth streamed down my forehead, blinding me.

The pain in my abdomen was a firestorm, and blood was everywhere.

Fading, my instinct took over. I dialed Killian’s number.

“K…”

Before I blacked out, I heard his ragged breathing and a panicked, almost unrecognizable desperation in his voice.

“Cassidy, don’t you dare die! Please…”

K…

It had been years since I used that nickname. Since the family betrayal, we’d both avoided it. We both knew the splinter was there, deeply embedded between us—unremovable, indigestible, corrupting even our love into something impure.

A flicker of consciousness returned, and I felt myself enclosed in a searing-hot embrace.

He was weeping.

The tears falling onto my face were scalding, burning through my skin.

“Cassidy, why did you do that to me?”

“I’m sorry. Just tell me you’re sorry, too, okay?”

“Cass, love me again. I swear I won’t ever hurt you again.”

It was Killian’s voice. If not for the crushing certainty of the last seven years, if not for the knowledge that he hated me, I would have believed it was real. I felt myself drowning in that embrace.

But when I finally woke up, the familiar voices from the hallway snapped me back to the horrific reality.

“I told you to mess with her head, not to get her killed. You know how I operate.”

“Talia, if you ever try this again, we’re done.”