The silence after Marcus left was not empty. It was filled with the echoes of words that could never be taken back.
Derek stood behind the bar, his palms flat on the wood, grounding himself. The letter was gone, a physical weight lifted from the space between them, but a heavier, more profound burden had settled in its place. Truth. Its price was etched in the new lines on Marcus’s face, in the hollow feeling under his ribs.
She defended you.
That was the anchor. The lifeline. In the wreckage of his longest friendship, that was the spar of wood he clung to. Maya had taken the most shameful artifact of his youth and wielded it like a shield. For him. She had seen the raw, pathetic confession of the boy he’d been and had not flinched. She had fought for the man he was.
The relief was a t
