Page 228 of Sinful Desires
I brought the phone closer to my ear, eyes locked on Théo’s bare back stretched out across our bed, all delicious thick muscle and tattoos. He lay naked, the cover having slipped down to his waist, his face buried in my pillow, skin still damp with sleep and sweat.
His body didn’t move, drained and wrecked, the way he only got when I’d made him make love to me endlessly. His shoulders rose with each breath, slow and deep.
A miracle had happened last week. His father had woken up.
Fourteen years.
Fourteen years of machines, silence, and waiting. And he’d opened his eyes, still holding his son’s hand.
He never let go.
The hospital staff had come running. Some were crying. Some were whispering prayers. Every single one of them pushed into the room just to witness it. They said it felt like something sacred had happened, something too impossible for science to explain.
When Théo had called me, his voice had cracked. Rough, breathless, stunned.
He couldn’t even say the words. I ran. We all ran. His mother beside me, gripping my arm like it was the only thing holding her up.
She collapsed the second she saw her husband alive. Her body hit the floor. But she woke up in his arms.
Cried in the arms of the man she thought she’d already lost forever.
The doctors said he wouldn’t be able to speak for a while. His vocal cords were bruised, stiff, almost foreign to him now.
He tried, but it hurt.
Still, he could understand us. He could recognize faces, track our movements, squeeze Théo’s hand. His left leg responded. His right might never move again, but it was a miracle all the same.
And maybe that’s what it took.
Maybe it took a son to come back and finally ask for forgiveness.
To forgive himself first.
“It’s okay,Mama,” I whispered, my eyes drifting over the sea beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass, the water calm, the first light stretching across it in quiet gold.
She cried on the other end of the line.
“No, it’s not,dolcezza. I asked for a divorce. I don’t want to be married to him anymore. Not after what he did to you. I know I’m late. Twenty years late. But I?…?I loved him, Scarlett. And Ithought—” she broke down again, the sound of her sobs mixing with a muffled shuffle.
Then Kiara’s voice cut in behind her as she took the phone. “Hey.Mamahas lost her mind this past month. We’re just happy you finally answered one of our calls.”
Since the night I’d found out he was the one who’d allowed the video to leak.
The man who’d let the world watch his own daughter in that position.
So intimate. So exposed.
I couldn’t. I’d needed space.
And if I was being honest, I was still angry. Angry they’dneverdefended me.
But after last week?…?I realized maybe I needed closure too.
Closure doesn’t give you back the years, the teenage nights I never had with my little sister, or the version of my mother I might have known if fame and money hadn’t torn us all apart. But maybe it could create a bridge for us to finally reach a better place.
Maybe we could find our way back to being a happy family.
Like we had been when I was a kid.
