So don't you sit there thinking you've got to be strong for me. You don't. Not with me. And that did it. Whatever wall she'd been holding up, it came down.
And Sophia Bennett put her face in her hands and cried. Not pretty, not quiet, but the real kind. The kind that comes out of a person who's been swallowing it for months. Marcus didn't say anything. He just stayed there, crouched in front of her close enough that she'd know he wasn't going anywhere.
And he let her get it out. When she finally lifted her head, her eyes were red and her breath was hitching and she let out a wet, embarrassed laugh. See, she said, "This is why I don't do this. You did fine." I ugly cried in front of the handyman.
I've seen ugly. That wasn't it. She laughed for real this time. And it broke the last of it. And she wiped her face and looked at him and something had changed between them.
Something you couldn't take back. She'd shown him the worst of it, and he hadn't flinched. And now there was a door open that hadn't been opened before. Okay, she said, sniffing. Fix my bed.
I'm fixing your bed for real this time. No talking. Just fix it. Yes, ma'am. He got back to work, and she watched, and the mood in the room settled into something warm and quiet.
For a while, the only sound was the drill and the ratchet, and Sophia occasionally handing him a tool before he asked for it because she watched close and she learned fast. "You'd make a decent apprentice," Marcus said, tightening a bracket. "Please, I've got two degrees." "I've got no degrees, and I can keep a woman's bed off the floor. Where's your degree tonight?"
She threw a rag at him. He caught it without looking and she said, "Show off." And he grinned and it was easy. So easy. And Marcus caught himself thinking that he could do this, that he'd missed this, that some part of him that he'd shut off three years ago and thought he'd shut off for good had come back on quiet without permission, sitting in a half unpacked apartment fixing a stranger's bed.
That was when her phone rang. Sophia glanced at the screen, and Marcus watched every ounce of ease drain out of her face. Just like that, she went pale and still and her thumb hovered over the phone like it was something hot. "You okay?" Marcus asked.
"It's nothing, Sophia. It's fine. It's I'll deal with it." She silenced the call and turned the phone face down on the mattress, but her hand was shaking now, just slightly, and Marcus had spent his whole life reading the difference between a thing that was fine and a thing that wasn't. That him?
He asked quietly. She didn't answer. That was Damon. He calls sometimes, she said too casual, staring at the wall. It's not a big deal.
It's a big deal enough that you just went white as a sheet. Marcus, drop it. What does he want? Money you don't have. A man like that doesn't just call to say hi.
I said, drop it. Her voice cracked on it, sharp and scared, and she stood up off the bed and walked to the window with her arms wrapped around herself. And Marcus knew he'd hit something, and he backed off because pushing wasn't going to open that door. It would only make her guard it harder. He went back to the frame, but the whole feel of the room had gone cold, and they both knew it.
And after a minute, Sophia said from over by the window in a small voice, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you. You didn't snap at me. I did. You've got a right to snap.
It's your bed and your phone and your business. Marcus kept working. Kept his voice level. I get in people's houses all day. I've learned there's a lot going on behind a door you can't see from the street.
I'm not going to push you, but I'll say one thing and then I'll leave it. What? He set the drill down and looked at her. Whatever that man is to you now," Marcus said. "However, he still gets his hooks in.
You don't owe him a single thing. Not your peace, not your fear, not that look you just had on your face. He already took the money. Don't let him have the rest of it, too." Sophia stared at him, and for a second, he thought she was going to close back up. but instead she nodded slow and something eased in her shoulders and she came back over and sat down on the mattress closer this time and she said very quietly, "He says I still owe him that the business was half mine, so the debt's half his, but since I signed everything legally, it's all on me."
And he he wants me to sign something, a paper saying I release him from all of it. And if I don't, he says he'll She stopped. He'll what? Marcus said, "It doesn't matter, Sophia. He'll what?"
She looked at her hands. "He's got things," she said. Pictures, messages from when we were together, private things. And he says, "If I don't sign the release, he'll he'll send them to my clients, my old firm. He knows exactly who to send them to to make sure I never work in this city again."
Her voice had gone flat and hollow. the voice of someone reciting a nightmare they'd told themselves too many times. So that's the situation. That's the whole thing. I lost everything to him and now he wants me to sign away my right to ever come after him for it. Or he burns down what's left of my name.
And I've been sitting on it for 2 months, not knowing what to do. Sleeping on a broken bed, too ashamed to tell my own mother. And now I'm telling you a man I met 4 days ago because she stopped. Because why, Marcus said. She looked at him.
Because you're the first person in a long time who looked at me like I was worth fixing, she whispered. The room went dead quiet. Marcus felt that sentence go through him like a current. He'd said a version of it himself in his own head a thousand nights. Worth fixing, worth the trouble, worth somebody staying.
He knew the exact weight of it. He knew what it cost her to say it out loud. He set the drill aside completely. Come here, he said. What?
Come sit over here. He patted the floor next to where he was crouched. I want to tell you something and I want to say it looking at you, not talking to your back. She came slow and sat down on the floor next to him, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched. When my wife left, Marcus said she cleaned out the account.
Same as you, not for a business, she just took it. Said she was owed it for the years she put in. left me with Lily and a mortgage and about $40. And I remember sitting there thinking, I will never let anybody do that to me again. I will never let anybody get close enough to take a thing from me again. And I built a wall around myself so high and so thick that for 3 years, not one living soul got over it.
Not one. And I told myself that was strength. It sounds like strength. It's not. He shook his head.
It's just a nicer word for hiding. I wasn't strong, Sophia. I was scared. Scared every single day. And I hit it so good that everybody in that whole neighborhood thinks Marcus Carter's the strongest man they know.
And not one of them knows I used to sit at my table at 2:00 in the morning wondering if I even mattered anymore to anybody but a six-year-old. Sophia was watching him with wet eyes. "Why are you telling me this?" she asked. because you just told me you're ashamed. And I want you to know you're sitting next to somebody who's been exactly as ashamed as you are and worse.
And I'm still here, still standing, still fixing sinks and raising a good girl and making it one day at a time. He looked at her. Shame lies to you. It tells you you're the only one. You're not the only one.
You're just the one holding it out loud right now in this room. And I'm telling you, you're not alone in it. Not anymore. Sophia's breath caught, and for a moment neither of them moved, sitting there on the floor of that half unpacked apartment, shouldertosh shoulder, and something passed between them that was bigger than the bed frame, bigger than the coffee, bigger than 4 days of knowing each other. It felt to Marcus like the first honest thing that had happened to him in 3 years.
Then Sophia's phone buzzed again. Not a call this time, a text. She flinched toward it before she could stop herself. And Marcus watched her read it, watched the blood drain out of her face all over again. And this time, she didn't hide the phone.