Chapter 83: YOU DESERVE TO BE ALONE FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, LUMI
Chapter 84
Lumi
The sound of Neve’s voice sliced through the silence, so sharp and so utterly disgusted that every drop of blood in my body turned to ice.
My heart slammed against my ribs like a trapped bird. The warm, comforting haze of the entire day shattered into a thousand jagged pieces right before my eyes.
Neve wasn’t supposed to be here. She was supposed to be three states away until next month.
Yet there she stood, frozen in the middle of my living room – her living room – her overnight bag dropped by her feet.
Her dark eyes...so terrifyingly similar to Ren’s... were wide with a mixture of raw shock and rapidly building fury.
Her gaze flicked from my swollen, kiss-bruised lips down to Ren’s heavy arm anchored around my waist, and then locked straight onto Theo sleeping soundly in his arms.
"Neve..." I choked out, my voice breaking on a pathetic, airless gasp. I dropped my hand from my mouth, taking a trembling step forward.
"Ren."
She said his name like it was something she’d found in her mouth by accident and wanted to spit back out. Not mine. His. Like she didn’t want to have anything to do with me, she wouldn’t even look at me.
"It’s... it’s not... I can explain..."
"Explain what, exactly." Her voice was very quiet. Quieter than I’d ever heard it. That was the part that scared me.
"That you couldn’t find a single other man in this entire country to sleep with?Out of every single man on this planet, Lumi? My little brother?!"
She was looking at me now, but with a look I never thought I’d get from her.
"Neve, that’s not..."
"He’s my brother, Lumi." Her hand came up and pressed flat against her own chest, like she was trying to hold something in.
"My little brother. You used to babysit him, Lumi. He is not some guy you met at a bar."
"Neve, calm down," Ren said, as he subtly shifted his massive frame, placing himself half an inch in front of me. "Don’t raise your voice. Theo is asleep."
"Shut up, Ren!" Neve snapped, her eyes flashing with a wild, hurt rage.
She ignored him completely, stepping straight past him to glare at me, her chest heaving under her coat.
"I trusted you. You were my best friend. When that bastard of an ex-husband cheated on you and broke your entire life apart, I was the one who picked you up off the floor. I held you together with my own two hands. And this is what you do to me?"
Tears of frustration glistened in her eyes, making my throat lock up with a suffocating, unbearable guilt.
"Is this your way of proving you’ve moved on?" She spat, her voice trembling with disgust as she gestured wildly between Ren and me.
"Using my brother? Someone who’s practically family to you? If you were that desperate to feel wanted again, you could have gone anywhere, Lumi.
Any bar, any app, any stranger in this entire city who didn’t come with my last name attached. But you picked him. You picked the one man I would never in a hundred years have thought to protect myself from."
"Neve, please, just let us explain," I begged, hot tears finally spilling over my lashes and scalding my cheeks. I reached out, my hands shaking violently. "Please, it’s not like that... I...lo..."
"You what? Love him?" Neve let out a harsh, cruel laugh that sliced straight through my heart.
She backed away from my reaching hands as if I were poison.
"You don’t love him, Lumi. You’re broken, and he was close, and safe. That’s not romance. That’s convenience wearing a nice face. You didn’t fall for my brother. You reached for the nearest warm thing that would tell you you’re still worth wanting, and it happened to be him."
"Neve, that’s enough," Ren growled, his voice dropping into a dangerous, dark tone as his jaw locked tight.
"No, it’s not enough!" Neve shouted softly, her eyes burning straight into mine with a malice I had never seen in her before.
"She’s evil, Ren. She took the one person in my life who was never supposed to be on the table, and she took him anyway, because it made her feel like a woman again. She didn’t care what it would cost either of us."
She looked back at me, her lip curling in absolute disdain.
"You deserve to be alone for the rest of your life, Lumi," she whispered, every word poisoned with raw hatred.
"You’ll do this to someone else one day, whoever’s closest, whoever’s easiest, because you don’t actually know how to be alone with yourself long enough to heal.
You’re a sick, selfish snake, and you deserve every bad thing that’s ever happened to you. Don’t you ever fucking call me again."
Before either of us could say another word, Neve grabbed her bag off the floor, whipped around, pulled the front door wide open, and slammed it shut behind her.
The sharp, deafening boom echoed off the walls.
The second the door clicked shut, the air left my lungs completely. It felt like I’d been punched straight in the stomach. My legs went entirely numb, buckling beneath my weight.
I would have hit the hard hardwood floor if Ren hadn’t moved like lightning, shifting Theo securely into the crook of his left arm while his broad right hand swept around my waist, catching me before I fell.
"Lumi, hey... look at me," his deep voice rumbled above me. He held me flush against his side, his broad palm pressing warm against my trembling spine, trying to anchor me.
"Babe, breathe. Look at me."
I couldn’t breathe. I was gasping, choking on my own frantic breaths as a wave of pure horror washed over me.
*You reached for the nearest warm thing. You deserve to be alone. You’re evil.*
Her words replayed in my head like a violent chant, deafening and ruthless, drowning out everything else.
Neve wasn’t just Ren’s sister. She was my lifeline. When I was broke, terrified, and completely alone after my Callum, she was the one who held me together when I had nothing left to hold myself with. And now she looked at me like I was a monster wearing her best friend’s face.
"She’s right," I sobbed out, pressing my palms against my face as harsh, ragged sobs tore from my chest. My heart was beating so fast it hurt.
"She’s right, Ren... I didn’t fall for you, I just...you were there, and you were safe, and I let myself believe it was more than that..."
"Don’t you dare finish that sentence." Ren’s voice cracked, sharp and sudden, like something in him had finally snapped too.
He caught my face between his broad hands, forcing me to look at him.
"She’s not right. She’s furious, and she’s grieving something, and she’s saying the cruelest thing she can think of to make it hurt as much as she’s hurting. That is not the same as it being true."
I pulled back sharply, looking up at him through a blinding blur of hot tears.
He stood there looking towering, broad, and fiercely protective...completely ready to take on the world for me.
But looking at him right now only made the panic flare into a blinding, agonizing roar.
Neve’s brutal words kept screaming in my ears. Seeing us together was what caused this.
Having Ren here, holding me, looking at me like I was still worth loving, made the guilt crush down on my chest until I felt like I was actually dying.
"No..." I whispered, shaking my head violently as I pulled against his grip.
"No, Ren, you need to go." Ren blinked, his dark brows pulling together as a subtle, sharp stiffness entered his shoulders.
"What?"
"Please, you have to leave," I begged, my voice cracking as I pointed a trembling hand toward the front door.
I couldn’t look at him without hearing Neve calling me a snake, without wondering if she’d just said out loud the one true thing about me nobody else had been cruel enough to say.
"I can’t... I can’t look at you right now. Please just leave."
"Lumi, I am not leaving you alone like this," Ren said, his voice dropping an octave, an edge of disbelief hardening his tone.
"I just told you I love you. I am not walking out because my sister said something designed to gut you. We need to handle this together."
"Ren, please!" I sobbed out, clutching my head as fresh tears spilled over.
I was spiraling, drowning in the sickening weight of what Neve said, and having Ren standing in my living room was suffocating me.
"My best friend just told me I’m evil because of us. She thinks I used you to feel wanted again. I need space... I just need you to leave. Please... if you care about me at all, just go!"
The moment those words left my mouth, I saw the exact second they struck him.
The fierce, protective warmth in his dark eyes died instantly. A cold, heavy stillness settled over his sharp jawline, masking the deep affection he’d showered on me all afternoon.
He looked down at me not with anger, but with a quiet, hollow hurt that made my chest bleed even worse.
"Fine," he said low.
His voice was flat. Emotionless. Completely drained of the heat that had filled it just moments ago.
Without another word, he turned on his heel and walked down the short hallway toward Theo’s bedroom.
I stood trembling in the middle of the room, listening to the soft sound of his heavy footsteps as he gently laid my sleeping boy into bed and pulled the covers up to his chin.
A moment later, he walked back out into the living room.
He didn’t step toward me. He didn’t reach out to touch me. He stopped right by the front door, his broad hand resting on the handle, looking cold, distant, and completely walled off.
He turned his head slightly, his dark, impassive gaze locking onto mine one last time.
"I’ll be at my place," he said softly, the bitter disappointment bleeding through every single word.
"Call me when you’re ready to stop pushing me away."
He pulled the door open, stepped out into the dark hallway, and let it click firmly shut behind him.
The apartment fell dead silent.
The moment the lock clicked, my legs completely gave out. I sank onto the floor right where I stood, pulling my knees tight against my chest, burying my face in my hands, and wept into the quiet darkness...completely destroyed, broken, and utterly alone.