Sweet Hatred
Chapter 154: I might fall in love

Chapter 154: I might fall in love

ARIA

Mom’s eyes lit up the second she saw me.

"Aria..." Her voice was raspy, but her smile was everything I remembered. "You look even more beautiful than the last time. Your boss must be taking good care of you at work."

I smiled for her. Small. Gentle. My lips twitched like they knew how to play the part even when my chest didn’t know how to feel.

Next to me, Olivia sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "Mom, please..." Her voice broke. "You have to stay strong. Don’t go yet. Please."

Our mother turned to her, eyes soft, tired, already sinking somewhere far away. She reached out and gently petted Olivia’s hair like she used to when we were kids. "I’m not going anywhere today, sweetheart. Don’t cry."

I watched them. The way Olivia folded into our mom’s embrace like a girl again, like time hadn’t passed. The way our mom smiled through pain and patted her, the way a mother holds the world together even as hers falls apart.

And I just watched.

I was the firstborn. I always had to hold it together.

That’s why I stopped crying so young. Someone had to be solid, someone had to be unshaken while Olivia got to cry, while she got to be comforted, babied, softened by grief.

Me? I became the shield. The filter. The sponge.

"I’m sorry I forced you to come back," Mom whispered, turning her head toward me again. "I know you probably weren’t done with whatever you were doing."

"It’s not true," I said quickly, kneeling at her bedside. "I’m glad I’m here. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be."

Her hand reached for mine and I took it, cradling it between my palms like something fragile I was too scared to hold.

Later, I told Michael and Olivia to go back, get some rest, check on Kaleb and Lily. They hesitated, but eventually nodded, worn out, red-eyed, clinging to each other as they left.

And then it was just me. Me and the monitors. The steady beeping. The faint hum of machines that were keeping my mother barely tethered to this world.

I sat there. Quiet. Still.

Watching her chest rise and fall, like the world’s slowest hourglass. Her breathing was calm. Too calm. Like her body had finally surrendered and was just waiting for permission to leave.

I didn’t think. I just watched.

My eyes burned but they stayed dry. The tears wouldn’t come. I felt nothing. Not sadness, not anger, just air and time and the strange echo of life slowing down.

And yet I cried so easily for Kael. Those tears had come without thinking.

What the hell did that even mean?

The door creaked softly. I didn’t move.

Then his voice. Low, cautious.

"Aria..."

I turned.

Kael stood there, drenched in the quiet, like he belonged to it. His eyes found mine, like they always did, sharp, searching, a storm just barely bottled.

The door opened behind me.

I didn’t move.

I didn’t need to. I knew who it was by the way the silence shifted, like the air held its breath just to make room for him.

Kael didn’t say anything. Not at first. He just stood there, long enough for me to feel the weight of his gaze sink into my skin. And then he moved, quiet as a secret, until he was beside me.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t ask. Didn’t fill the room with empty comfort.

He just knelt beside my chair.

His fingers brushed over my knuckles. Once. Twice. A barely-there touch, patient, reverent.

I didn’t look at him, but I let him take my hand.

Because my body remembered him.

It remembered the feel of his touch, the way it rewired the tension in me without even trying. My shoulders dropped the tiniest bit. My jaw loosened. I didn’t even realize how tightly I’d been holding myself until that moment.

Kael’s thumb traced over my hand again, and finally, in the softest voice I’d heard from him yet, he asked, "How are you?"

I didn’t look at him. I stared at the slow rise and fall of my mother’s chest.

"What do you think?" I said quietly.

He exhaled, almost like he hated asking, hated hearing it from me.

"How’s she doing?" he murmured.

"She’s stable," I whispered. "Sleeping, I guess."

He didn’t respond. Just stayed there beside me, his warmth pressed into the cold silence, like he wasn’t going to leave until I did.

And then I asked it, because it had been eating me alive from the inside.

"How did you do it?" My voice cracked at the edges. "When you lost your mom. When you lost Ivan... how did you survive it?"

Kael looked up at me.

His expression was... soft and hard at the same time. Like someone had split him in two. His jaw clenched, but his eyes—his eyes looked hollow and full all at once.

"I didn’t deal with it," he said quietly. "I just... lived it. Every day. Waiting to be taken too, but somehow still breathing."

He paused, voice lower now, raw.

"The pain didn’t leave. I just got used to its weight. Like carrying a second skin."

My throat tightened.

"I’m sorry," I whispered.

He looked at me, something warmer flickering through the grief.

"You always say that," he said, his lips lifting slightly. "Always apologizing for things that aren’t your fault."

I gave a faint smile. The kind that hurt more than it soothed.

Kael lifted my hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it. Gentle. Slow.

"You don’t have to worry about anything else right now," he said. "Just focus on your mom. Be here. That’s all that matters."

"You spoil me too much, boss," I murmured, trying to force a little lightness back. "The other staff might get dissatisfied."

"They can write a letter of complaint," he said dryly.

I let out a small breath of something like a laugh. Just a tiny puff of air. Then his tone changed.

"And anyway... I’m kind of at fault for stealing you away for a while."

"No," I said quickly, turning toward him. "No, it’s not your fault. I’m really happy we went on that trip. You have no idea."

He looked at me then.

And it was... different.

There was something in his eyes, something vulnerable, unguarded. A flicker of affection so deep it scared me. Like I was a star he’d accidentally wandered too close to. Like he couldn’t look away, even if it burned.

His gaze dropped to my lips, then back to my eyes, and I felt it like a brushstroke over my chest, warm, aching, dangerous.

I swallowed and tried to smile.

"You shouldn’t look at me like that," I whispered, teasing. "I might fall in love."

Kael didn’t laugh, didn’t even smirk. He just turned his gaze away.

To my mother. And somehow, that stung more than anything.

The silence grew heavier, stretching between us like a thread pulled too tight. I wanted to say something—anything—but the words kept catching in my throat.

Kael’s hand was still holding mine, his thumb slowly brushing over my skin in a rhythm that felt too intimate, too grounding.

I turned back to look at him.

He was still kneeling, his eyes cast down now. His brow furrowed like he was lost in some far-off war, in memories he didn’t want to revisit. I didn’t want to pull him out of it. I didn’t want to let him go either.

But I felt it, this pull. This weight.

Like we were standing at the edge of something that neither of us was ready to name.

His name was on the tip of my tongue when the door suddenly burst open.

"Aria—!"

Sarah’s voice sliced through the silence, loud and breathless.

I turned, startled, as she all but stumbled into the room, her coat half-off her shoulders, hair wild, eyes wide...

And then she saw him.

Kael Roman.

Still kneeling beside my chair, holding my hand like I was his gravity.

Sarah froze. Her breath caught. Her eyes shot to mine like what the actual hell, but she didn’t say it out loud.

Kael, composed as ever, stood slowly. Let go of my hand. Straightened his jacket like nothing had just passed between us.

He glanced at Sarah and gave her a small nod.

"I’ll give you both some time," he said, voice low but respectful.

And just like that, he walked out. The air felt colder the second he left.

I stood. My legs were trembling, but I stood.

Sarah didn’t wait. She rushed forward and pulled me into her arms without hesitation.

I collapsed into her... physically, emotionally because Sarah wasn’t just a friend. She was the part of me that still knew how to feel safe.

And for the first time since that call, since I dropped everything and ran home, I felt it.

Real, complete ease.

She held me tighter, hand smoothing over my hair like she knew exactly how much I needed it. And behind my burning eyelids, I could still see the shape of Kael’s retreating back.

But in Sarah’s arms... I let it all go.