The Monroe's house smelled like time had stopped.
Dust in the air.
Rot in the walls.
Memories clinging to every nail and crack.
Jesse moved through it like a ghost retracing his old footprints.
I followed him.
Quiet.
Close.
Ready.
---
We passed the bedroom where he once slept on the floor.
The kitchen with the burn mark from a pot he dropped when he was thirteen.
The back door with the lock he once picked to sneak out and breathe.
Every room had a story.
But the one that stopped him cold?
The hallway.
Halfway down, he paused.
Stared at the old wallpaper.
Ran his fingers over a faint crack in the plaster.
"This," he whispered, "is where he pinned me once."
I swallowed. "Jesse—"
He turned.
His eyes didn't hold pain.
They held power.
"Come here."
---
He pressed me to that wall.
Gently.
Slowly.
His hands on my waist.
His breath hot against my throat.
His voice low—controlled.
"I used to think this wall only remembered violence."
He kissed my jaw.
"Now I want it to remember you."
---
Clothes didn't come off all at once.
They peeled slowly, like fear shedding its skin.
The wall was cold.
But his body was heat.
He pushed into me like he had something to prove—
That this house didn't own him anymore.
That he could take what was his.
That love was louder than history.
---
My hands gripped his shoulders.
His name fell from my lips like a spell.
And when he whispered mine—
"Kade, fuck, baby…"
—it echoed in a place that used to swallow him whole.
---
We moved like fire.
Like thunder.
Like nothing this house had ever seen before.
And when we both came—
shaking, gasping, alive—
it wasn't just a climax.
It was a reclamation.
---
After, he leaned his forehead against mine.
Still inside me.
Still trembling.
"I never thought I could feel safe here."
I cupped his face. "You're not alone anymore."
He kissed me then.
Soft.
Grateful.
New.
And for the first time, the wall didn't remember pain.
It remembered love.