The hideout wasn’t much—a rundown gym long abandoned, the roof patchy and the punching bags torn—but it was yours. Yours and hers. A place neither your fathers could poison, destroy, or even touch.

You were already there, shirt half-ripped, bruises blooming down your ribs like painful constellations. Your knuckles were still bleeding.

You knew it was her before you turned. Only Steph ever opened it like she was asking for permission.

She stepped in with slumped shoulders and blood on her sleeve. Her hair—usually tossed and glowing like a rebellious halo—hung limp, pulled into a rushed ponytail. Her hoodie was zipped up to the throat. That was never a good sign.

“Hey,” she said, her voice so small it barely echoed.

You didn’t ask what happened. You could already see it—her hands clenched, her cheek darkened with a bruise that hadn’t been there yesterday, the ghost of tears still clinging to her lashes even though she’d wiped them away.

She collapsed onto the floor next to you without a word, legs folded, arms wrapped tight around herself. The silence pressed in, thick and bitter. You didn’t break it. You just reached for the first aid kit and slid it toward her.

She didn’t touch it. Not yet.

“I went by his place,” she said finally. “Thought maybe… I don’t know. Maybe this time he wouldn’t be drunk. Maybe he’d ask me how I’ve been. Or even say sorry.”

You waited.

“He told me I ruined his life,” she said, with a dry little laugh. “Said I’m not even worth hitting anymore.”

Your jaw tightened. Your father had told you something similar two hours earlier, right before he threw you through his office door. “You’re a waste of my name,” he’d spat, while you coughed blood into your gloved hand. “You pretend you’re better than me, but you’ll never stop being my son.”

Steph must’ve seen it on your face. She didn’t ask, but her hand slid across the floor until it found yours. She squeezed.

It was that simple.

“Every time I think I’ve moved past him,” you said softly, “he finds a new way to remind me I’m still his. Still the boy he raised to be cruel. Still the weapon.”

Steph leaned her head against your shoulder, breathing slow. “Then maybe we remind each other who we really are.”

You sat together in the stillness. The buzzing light above flickered weakly, casting the room in an amber haze.

“I want to see,” she said quietly.

You blinked. “What?”

“Your scars.” She looked up at you, her eyes glinting but not afraid. “I want to trace them. Learn them. Like a map. Like… I don’t know. Proof we survived.”

Your throat tightened, but you nodded. Wordlessly, you peeled off your shirt.

She moved slowly, reverently. Her fingers brushed across your chest, where the cigarette burn from your thirteenth birthday still lingered. Down your ribs, where a knife once sank too deep during a lesson in “manhood.” Across your shoulder, where your father’s ring left a crooked scar when he backhanded you into a mirror.

Each touch was soft. Each one made you breathe a little easier.

“Here,” she said, pulling her hoodie down. She tugged her sleeve up, revealing the long line on her forearm. “This was him. I was fifteen. I wore bracelets for a year to hide it.”

You kissed the spot gently.

“This one?” She turned, letting you see the pale mark on her lower back. “Pushed down the stairs. Didn’t cry till he left the room.”

You pressed your palm over it and left it there.

The silence was sacred now. You traced each mark like you were redrawing her history—replacing violence with something that felt like healing.

“We’re not them,” she whispered eventually. “We fight. And we bleed. But we do it for something real.”

“For someone real,” you added. And you meant her.

She smiled, broken and perfect. “You make me feel like I’m not just damage.”

You nodded, your voice rough. “You’re not. You’re light.”

Steph curled into you then, her cheek pressed against your chest, your arms wrapped tight around her like you could hold the both of you together long enough to become whole.

And maybe, in that fragile dark, you did.