The morning after came in bruises.
Not on her skin—but in her soul.
Aaliyah lay tangled in Silas's sheets, staring at the ceiling like it might tell her what she'd just done. What she'd become.
The call to prayer echoed faintly from the distant mosque minaret.
It made her stomach twist.
She wrapped the sheet tighter around her body, trying to hide from a God she wasn't sure still wanted to look at her.
Silas was still asleep, one arm across her waist, breath steady against her shoulder. He looked peaceful.
But she didn't feel peace.
She felt the echo of his voice when he told her he loved her.
And the empty space in her chest where her answer should've been.
She got up quietly. Gathered her clothes. Left a note scrawled in trembling handwriting: "I'm sorry."
---
She didn't go home.
Not yet.
Instead, she walked through the back streets until her feet led her—unforgivingly—to the one place she shouldn't go.
Lucien's garage.
It was dusk now. The sky bleeding red.
He stood with a cigarette between his lips, engine grease on his hands, shirt half unbuttoned like temptation given form.
He looked up when she appeared.
Didn't smile.
Didn't blink.
Just tossed the cigarette and stepped toward her like a storm.
"You look like hell," he said.
She said nothing.
He took in the mess—her hair, her swollen eyes, the hoodie still clutched around her shoulders like a shield.
"You ran to him, didn't you?"
She looked away.
Lucien exhaled bitterly. "And yet here you are. Why?"
"I don't know," she whispered.
"Bullshit."
"I thought maybe… maybe if I lost something, I'd feel lighter."
He moved closer. So close she could smell the smoke and sweat and metal on him.
"Did you?" he asked, voice low.
She shook her head.
"I just feel… used up."
Lucien brushed a strand of hair from her face. "Then let me ruin you properly."
Her breath caught.
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her inside.
No words now. Just heat.
She expected roughness. Fire.
But Lucien surprised her.
He kissed her like she was glass. Touched her like he'd fantasized about it a thousand times. Like he hated himself for every second of it but couldn't stop.
"I don't believe in anything," he murmured against her skin, "but I swear, Aaliyah, I would fall to my knees for you."
Her body responded before her mind could protest.
She shouldn't want this.
She shouldn't want him.
But when he lifted her onto the desk, lips tracing the same spots Silas had kissed hours before, her guilt turned to wildfire.
There was a difference.
Silas made her feel loved.
Lucien made her feel alive.
She came apart again—this time in the arms of a man who didn't offer her salvation, only shared damnation.
And when she finally slipped out of the garage in the early hours of morning, her legs weak and soul shivering, one truth buried itself deep into her gut.
She was late.
And when the time came, she wouldn't know who the father was.
---