Ray Lin –
I wasn't trying to eavesdrop.
I just couldn't sleep. Again.
The house was too quiet, too big, too cold in ways that no blanket could fix. I wandered down the stairs barefoot, wrapped in one of the oversized sweaters the maids had brought up for me. I liked this one—it smelled faintly like cedarwood and something clean. Maybe him.
The garden door was slightly open.
And that's when I heard him.
His voice, raw. Not like the Sebastian Blake the world feared. Not even like the man who bought me.
Just a boy. A broken boy.
"My mother. She screamed once, and then she went quiet."
I froze.
I didn't breathe.
The words hit me harder than any slap my stepfather had ever thrown. Harder than the chains. The auction. The bruises. The humiliation.
Because suddenly, I wasn't the only one bleeding in silence.
He saw it too. He lived it. That same nightmare. Different monsters, same shadows.
I didn't move. I stood there, hidden by ivy and moonlight, and let him speak. I let him confess to the garden, to the night, to himself.
And when I finally crept back upstairs… something in me had shifted.
The next morning, I didn't hide from him.
I didn't flinch when he walked into the room.
I didn't panic when his hand brushed the back of mine while passing me my tea.
I just looked at him. Really looked at him.
And smiled.
Soft. Gentle. Not the sunshine-clingy-yapping Ray everyone knew. Not the mask I wore to keep people from asking.
Just… me.
He blinked. He looked confused, maybe a little suspicious.
Good.
Let him wonder why.
Later that day, he was standing by the window in the study, flipping through some file. The sun hit his jawline and turned his hair gold at the edges.
I walked in.
I almost said it.
"I heard what you said last night."
But I didn't.
Instead, I asked, "Do you want me to bring you coffee?"
He glanced up, surprised. "You don't have to."
"I want to."
His gaze lingered for a second too long. "Alright."
That was it.
No big confessions. No confrontation.
Just a mug of coffee between two people too scarred to say the things that mattered.
But I think he knew.
Because later, I found a single rose on my nightstand.
A perfect white one.
And I swear…
Its stem was thornless.
4o