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Where Adrien retreated, Ethan leaned in...not emotionally, but practically. He was always on the phone, moving from room to room with a quiet sense of purpose, dealing with lawyers, the dealership, and details none of us had even thought about in the chaos of that night.

That became his way of coping.

If there was something that could be fixed, he focused on it. If it couldn’t be fixed, he moved on to the next issue.

He still came to see me, though.

Not every day, but enough that I started to expect him. He’d knock once before letting himself in, usually finding me in the living room or kitchen, and for a little while, it felt almost normal.

"Have you eaten?" he asked one afternoon, leaning against the counter like he belonged there.

I shrugged. "Define eaten."

He frowned slightly and moved toward the fridge. "That’s not a real answer."

"I had coffee."

"That doesn’t count and you know it."

He pulled out a container of leftovers and set it on the counter, giving me a look that said arguing was pointless.

"Sit," he instructed simply.

I did.

Ethan instructed the chefs on what I could eat and he watched me as I struggled to put food in my stomach after days of skipping meals because sitting at the dining room alone without Keith, Helen or Adrien made me feel like I was being suffocated.

It was easier than thinking about why I hadn’t bothered to eat in the first place.

We didn’t always talk about what had happened. Sometimes, we just coexisted, the silence between us not as heavy as the quiet with Adrien, yet still filled with everything we hadn’t figured out how to express.

Adrien didn’t even argue or complain when ’Golden Boy’ came to visit, that’s how I knew Adrien was completely out of it.

"How are you holding up?" I asked him once, watching as he leaned against the counter.

He took a moment to consider before answering.

"I’m... okay," he said slowly.

I nodded, though I wasn’t sure what ’okay’ was supposed to feel like anymore.

"And you?" he asked.

I hesitated.

"I don’t know," I admitted. "It still doesn’t feel real."

He didn’t argue with that.

He just nodded, like he understood.

And then he lingered a little longer, as if he knew leaving too soon would make the quiet worse again. When he finally did go, the mansion felt bigger than before.

Too big and too empty.

I tried to make things feel normal again.

I really did.

I went through routines that felt nonsensical now, sitting at the dining table at the usual times, walking through the same rooms, pretending that if I kept doing the same things, something inside me would catch up and believe it.

But it didn’t work.

Every room felt like a reminder of something that no longer existed.

Every hallway carried echoes of conversations that meant something different now.

And no matter how hard I tried to ignore it, I couldn’t stop thinking about one thing.

My mother’s words.

They had settled deep within me, heavier than anything else that had happened, replaying in my mind at the worst times.

I wish I had never given birth to you.

No matter how many times I tried to push it away, it lingered.

A week after everything fell apart, she came back.

I heard the front door open while I was in the living room, the sound sharp enough to yank me out of the quiet haze I had been drifting through. Her footsteps followed, slower than I expected, almost hesitant as they crossed the floor.

For a moment, I seriously considered leaving all together to Gigi’s house until she left. But I stayed where I was. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

She appeared in the doorway a few seconds later, looking... different.

Not broken, but worn down in a way I hadn’t seen before. The polished image she had always carried with such care seemed slightly out of place now, like something she had put back on out of habit rather than confidence.

"Noah," she said softly.

I glanced at her but didn’t say anything.

She walked a few steps into the room, her gaze searching my face as if she was trying to find something familiar there.

"I...I’ve been trying to fix this," she continued, her voice careful and measured. "You have to understand... everything I did, everything that happened... it wasn’t just for me."

I stayed silent.

She stepped closer, her tone shifting to something almost pleading.

"We were struggling before, Noah. You remember that, don’t you? We barely had anything. I had to think about our future, about what kind of life you would have. Keith... he gave us stability. He gave us everything we didn’t have."

Her words lingered in the air, expecting a reaction that never came.

"I didn’t know everything," she added quickly, as if that would change anything. "Not like you think. I didn’t plan any of this. I just... did what I had to do to survive. For us."

I watched her as she spoke, noticing the slight movement of her hands, how her voice tried to stay steady even as something beneath it started to crack.

She was trying to reach me. Trying to pull me back into something that no longer existed.

"You’ll understand one day," she said, stepping closer. "When you’re older, when you realize how hard the world truly is. You’ll see that I was trying to protect you."

I considered her words for a moment.

Then I looked away.

"I don’t have anything to say to you," I replied quietly.

The change in her expression was immediate.

"What?" she asked, her voice sharpening a bit.

"I don’t have anything to say," I repeated, my tone steady.

She stared at me, almost waiting for more, an argument, anger, something she could push against.

When it didn’t come, her composure began to crack.

"After everything I’ve done for you?" she demanded, her voice rising. "After all my sacrifices, this is how you repay me?"

I remained silent.

"You think you’re better than me now?" she continued, frustration building. "You think exposing Keith makes you some sort of hero?"

Still, I didn’t respond.

Her anger shifted, twisting into something sharper.

"And don’t think I don’t know what you’ve been doing," she added, narrowing her eyes. "You and Adrien, under this roof... acting like none of it matters. You’re stepbrothers. Do you realize how wrong that is?"

I didn’t react.

The words hit, but they didn’t hit the same way as before.

"You’ve ruined everything," she said, her voice breaking now. "Everything I worked for, everything I built... and for what? So you could feel better about yourself?"

I stood up slowly.

She watched me, her expression flickering between anger and something like panic.

"Noah—"

I walked past her without stopping.

"Noah, I’m talking to you!"

I didn’t turn around.

Her voice followed me down the hallway, rising, cracking, turning louder and more desperate with each step.

"You can’t just ignore me!" she shouted. "I’m your mother!"

I reached my door and opened it.

"You owe me more than this!" she called after me, her words tumbling together. "After everything I fucking sacrificed for you—"

I stepped inside.

"Noah!"

I closed the door.

Her voice didn’t stop right away. It carried through the wood, muffled but still loud enough for me to hear the anger, desperation, disbelief that I had just walked away without giving her anything in return.

I leaned against the door, listening to it fade.

For a long time, I didn’t make a move.

The room felt quiet again, but it wasn’t the same heavy silence as before. It was... empty, in a way that felt strangely steady.

I thought about everything she had said.

About everything she had done.

About the way she had looked at me when she said she wished I had never been born.

And for the first time, I realized there was nothing left to hold onto.

Whatever connection I had thought we shared, whatever bond I believed we had wasn’t something that had snapped under pressure or shattered in a single moment.

It had worn away, piece by piece, until there was nothing left at all.

And standing there in the quiet of my room, with her voice finally fading into the distance, I understood: it wasn’t coming back.