Chapter Thirty-nine - Mended Memories

Chapter Thirty-nine - Mended Memories
BLAINE

I couldn’t stop staring at it. Minutes had passed, and still, my eyes refused to move from the thing sitting on my desk.

It somewhat looked like the cup my mother made for me when I was a boy.
Not exactly. It was … more now.

Even though it wasn’t the same anymore, I couldn’t look at it without feeling that memory tug at me.

I’d been ten when my father and I had one of our usual fights. He called me soft, accused me of wasting time on feelings. For him, affection toward my mother was acceptable. For me, it was a weakness. We’d been over that argument so many times it felt carved into stone.

That day, my mother had taken me into the city instead. We ended up in a pottery workshop where we could design our own mugs.

The smell of clay and paint is still sharp in my mind. We traded our creations when we finished. She’d painted the family motto across the body: Family is everything. I rolled my eyes then, but I kept the mug close ever since. Not for the words, but for the memory of being just her son — not my father’s heir.

I brushed a thumb along the rim of the object in front of me now. The original mug was gone. YIt had shattered on the floor, the sound breaking something in me I didn’t know was still whole.

When it hit the ground, the memory of my mother cracked with it. All that filled the space after was heat — sharp, coiled, dangerous. I’d felt my fingers twitch, ready to wrap around her throat and squeeze until the rage was spent.

Malia’s face flashed in my mind.

She’d looked at me with fear before, but it was always tangled with other things — frustration, challenge, even curiosity. Yesterday, there’d been nothing but despair, bare and unguarded. Her eyes had gone glassy, pupils wide, like she was bracing for a hit.

And I’d been the one to put that look there.

The thought made my jaw clench until it ached.

I leaned back in my chair, the weight of the room pressing in. I hadn’t spoken to anyone since. Wouldn’t. Not until I decided which part of me she would meet next.

Last night in the hallway, Val had thrown me a glare. One cold look from me had stopped her from saying whatever she’d been about to. She knew which battles to pick.

Avoidance was safer — for her and me. Space gave me time to think, to decide if I wanted to leash what was inside me… or let it off.

Either way, the next time our eyes met, she wouldn’t see the same man she saw before yesterday.

When it happened, she got hurt.

I had hurt her.

Not by accident, but by shoving her back hard enough for her to stumble straight into the shards. Even then, her expression hadn’t changed — still unyielding in her desperation. But the red haze of my rage vanished the moment I saw a different red staining her skin.

Instead of going to her, I turned on my heel and stormed back into my study, slamming the door so hard the frame shook. I tore into the room, wrecking half of it in minutes. Not just because of what I’d lost when that cup shattered… but because of what I might have broken with my reaction.

Inside, it was chaos.

Grief — for losing another piece of my mother.
Rage — at her carelessness.
Guilt — for the blood on her skin because of me.
Frustration, sadness, fear, relief, pain… and an empty kind of void that swallowed all of it.

For the first time, I understood what my father had always warned me about. Emotions are a liability. They cloud judgment. They dictate action. They make you reckless.

I’d expected Malia to feel the same — to keep her distance, to stew in her anger. Instead, she had spent the night repairing the cup. Val and Isabella had been moving in and out of her room, speaking in low voices in the hall. Malia hadn’t left, not until this morning when she walked out with her friends to go to school.

I’d sent Gabe a text with simple instructions: drive the girls to school and pick them up afterward.

Only once the house had fallen silent again did I leave my room. I went straight to my study and there I found the cup I was holding.

The weight of it in my hand soothed some of the emotions still raging under my skin. My principessa had done this for me. Not just fixed it — remade it.

She’d used the kintsugi method, gold flowing through each fracture like molten light, turning the breaks into something deliberate, something proud. It was more than repair. It was a claim. A part of her world stitched into mine — her heritage, her hands, her time.

This mug had once been a memory of my mother alone. Now it carried the touch of two women I would bleed for. Two women who’d shaped me, whether they meant to or not.

And maybe that was why holding it felt dangerous. Because if it ever shattered again, there’d be no putting it back together. Not for a second time.
Only then did I notice the small note lying on my desk, in the exact spot where the mug had stood.

I didn’t pick it up right away. My gaze lingered on the neat fold, the faint curve of handwriting bleeding through the paper. It felt heavier than it should for something so small.

After a beat, I reached for it and unfolded it.

I’m sorry. I broke something that mattered to you, and I hate that I let my temper get in the way.
I tried to mend it… and maybe, in time, we can also mend whatever was building between us.
— Malia

Fuck. I hadn’t expected that. Now I felt even worse for hurting her—and for avoiding her. With that note, she hadn’t just asked for forgiveness; she’d tugged hard on the leash of the beast inside me.

The original game could continue… only now, the stakes had changed.