Page 120 of One Last Encore

I love you. I love you. I love you.

It was right there, pressed against the back of her teeth, begging to be said. She loved him. She knew it like muscle memory, like breath.

But still, the words stayed lodged in her chest. Maybe because saying them out loud would strip away the last piece of armor she had left. Maybe because some part of her still needed to know he could stop running toward anger and recklessness, and choose her instead.

So instead, she reached for him. She leaned in and closed the space between them, her hand brushing his cheek before sliding to the back of his neck. And then she kissed him, slow and certain, a silent confession in the shape of lips and warmth and trembling breath. She kissed him like it meant something, because it did. She kissed him like the words were there, just waiting for the right moment to fall.

When she pulled back, his expression had softened, and his fingers curled around her wrist, drawing her hand to his ribs. Beneath her palm, she felt another small scar, its edges raised beneath the uneven script of a tattoo. The words, though shaky, read:Keep goin’, Bear.

Her fingers traced the delicate script, lingering over each letter. "What’s this one?" she asked softly.

Beck’s lips quirked into a bittersweet smile. "I can’t remember how I got the scar. But the writing... that’s from a letter my grandma wrote to me before she passed away," he said quietly. "She sent it when I got accepted to Juilliard. She was so proud of me."

"It’s beautiful," she murmured.

"She was the only one in my family who gave a damn about what I wanted." His voice was quiet, but there was a bitter edge beneath it. His fingers flexed, then slowly relaxed. "My mom and Rodney? They’d have been fine if I rotted in that trailer. Rodney’s practically rooting for me to fail. Makes it easier for him to feel better about never trying."

Ingrid hesitated, then exhaled slowly. "My mom’s the opposite," she said, voice tight. "If I’m not perfect, if I’m not the best, it’s like I’ve failed her. There’s no space to mess up, no room to just... be human. It’s suffocating. Sometimes I want to do the opposite of everything she expects. Just once, choose something for me."

"Then do it," he said simply.

She let out a dry laugh. "You say that like it’s easy."

"It can be," he said with a shrug. "We keep breaking ourselves trying to fix people who don’t even think they’re broken. Let them self-destruct if that’s what they’re set on."

His words hit something raw inside her. She sat with it for a moment, turning it over like a jagged stone in her palm. She imagined not calling her mom. Not stretching herself thinnerevery time a new demand was thrown her way. But she also saw the aftermath. The cold silence. The disappointed looks. The sharp comments disguised as concern. The way her mother turned every slight into a catastrophe.

Memories surfaced like bruises. Ruined holidays. Dinners where one wrong word could detonate the room. Joy undercut by control.

"We waste so much energy trying to prove something to people who never bothered to understand us."

"I can hear it in your voice," he said, quietly. He hesitated. "Anger."

She did feel angry. It was sharp and coiled tight in her chest. The kind born from never being truly seen by the people who were supposed to love you. From always feeling like an afterthought. Like no matter what you did, it was never enough to be chosen.

She thought of his mother. The addiction. The prison sentence. The damage she’d left behind.

"Is that what you feel toward your mom?" Ingrid asked gently, her voice careful. "Anger?"

He tensed, and for a moment she thought he might shut down. But then he exhaled, slow and uneven, and his shoulders dropped.

"You have no idea," he said. "It’s complicated. I love her. She’s my mom. But she was never really a mother to me."

He paused, the next words thick with memory.

"A mother doesn’t choose her addictions over her kids. She doesn’t lock her children in a closet so she can go out drinking."

His voice cracked, and he shook his head like he could shake the memory off. Ingrid said nothing. She reached for him instead, pressing a hand to his arm.

"I remember Rodney and me," Beck continued, softer now, more to himself than to her. "Huddled in the dark, waiting.Hours would pass. We’d whisper to each other, trying to pretend we weren’t scared. And when she finally came back..."

His throat worked around the words.

"She didn’t even see us. Too drunk to care. She’d stumble in, pass out cold, and that was it. No food. No light. Nothing. We were just kids. Kids trying to figure out how to survive when no one else gave a damn."

A lump formed in Ingrid’s throat. She could see them so clearly. Two small boys, lost in the dark, clinging to each other and waiting for a mother who never really came back.

The pain in his voice was almost too much to bear. She blinked hard, fighting back the sting behind her eyes.

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