Chapter 365: Emma World of Denied Desires

The air around Emma felt thick, charged, like atmosphere before a storm. Peter’s new presence was a physical force, pressing against her skin, making her pulse leap in a frantic, traitorous rhythm.

She’d felt this pull before—whispers of it, flickers she’d beaten down with logic and shame. But now? Standing here, inches from the face that had haunted her dreams for years, the whispers had become a roaring tide.

It all crashed back. The memory: fourteen years old, Jack Morrison’s sneering face, the circle of jeering kids. Stepping forward to protect her, Peter had taken the beating instead—curling into himself on the asphalt, lip split, already swelling.

The image seared into her mind: his blood mixing with rainwater on the dirty ground.

She remembered the coppery tang of blood when his lip split, the way he’d curled inward, taking kicks to the ribs without a sound.

Protecting her.

That wasn’t just a moment—it was the moment her world tilted.

Gratitude curdled into something visceral and feverish as she watched him stagger up, wiping blood from his chin with the back of his hand, eyes locked on hers.

"Stay behind me, Em."

He’d barely whispered it, but it branded her.

He’d done it without a word, just stepped in front of her. That was the first crack. Gratitude, fierce and fierce, warred with a confusing, warm ache low in her belly.

He protected me.

That was the first crack.

She was seeing the

ghost of the fractured boy

she’d loved since she was thirteen and he eleven. Even then, she’d understood the secret weight of a crush—the thrilling ache of wanting someone forbidden.

At eleven, Peter was still a boy who barely understood love, a blank slate trying to navigate a world that already despised him. But Emma, at thirteen, had already tasted the bitter ache of a secret crush—thirteen and already tasting the edges of it — knew what it meant to hide a crush, to feel something she could never confess.

S

he knew the thrill of hidden longing, the sharp pang of wanting someone she could never, should never, confess to. And she’d watched. Watched as the world bent Peter down, piece by brutal piece.

Peter remained a blank slate, emotionally walled off long before Jack’s fists began breaking him.

Jack made sure of it. Jack, who blamed Peter’s dead mother for everything rotten in his parents’ marriage, who decided the boy should pay for sins he never committed. The schoolyards became his stage: fists, jeers, and the cruel chorus of children who called Peter the son of a whore who died giving birth to him.

Jack Morrison made sure Peter’s walls became his tomb.

"Son of a whore who died giving birth to you!"

The jeers echoed in Emma’s ears now, mixing with the sick thud of kicks to ribs.

Some teachers looked away.

When hauled into the principal’s office, Peter lied with terrifying calm:

"I just fell."

he’ll deny it over and over again... all with a smile too steady for a child.

"I just fell," he’d say the next day they called him again in office until teachers who cared and the Principals gave up.

He lied, because he had to.

Jack’s threat was poison in Peter’s veins:

"My mom runs Mercy Hospital. Talk, and Linda loses her job. Your charity case family starves."

Peter had internalized his role:

"I am the burden. I endure so Emma and Sarah eat."

Too smart for his age, Peter had already carried the crushing weight of a terrible logic: if Linda lost her job at Mercy, the twins—Emma and Sarah—would suffer. He was the charity case. The burden.

The sacrifice necessary for their fragile stability. So, he swallowed every blow, every insult, every humiliation.

By sixteen, it was instinct. He absorbed Jack’s rage like a human shield, always ensuring Emma and Sarah remained untouched and would look at them and made sure they looked away. Emma saw it all. Saw how the boy she secretly loved was being systematically broken down. And yet he never raised his voice in his own defense.

His silence wasn’t weakness—it was

martyrdom

. The unending penance of a child who never asked to be born.

The School became a battlefield than a school to Peter. Jack’s taunts, his shoves, Peter enduring it all with a quiet, stoic resolve that shattered her.

"Don’t interfere, Em,"

he’d murmur, his voice low but firm when she or Sarah bristled.

"If Mom loses her job at the hospital... we lose everything. If you ever tell her, she’ll lose and I will deny

it." Foolish as she was, she’d looked away.

He’d suffer to protect their fragile stability. Each time she witnessed it, that ache deepened, twisting into something darker, hotter. Anger at Jack, yes, but also... a desperate, secret longing to

be

the reason he fought, the one he’d protect so fiercely. She’d shove it down, bury it deep, labeling it ’sibling loyalty’. It was a lie.

Through all of it, Peter never broke. He endured. He absorbed. He protected. But Emma knew the devastating truth. His brilliance, his unnerving calm, his strange maturity—they weren’t signs of strength. They were scars. Thick, deep, invisible scars covering the wreckage of the boy who’d been shattered years ago.

The crash had already happened, hidden in plain sight for everyone to see, and everyone mistook the wreckage for resilience.

Then Trent. Weeks ago, the nightmare in the office. The hands, the breath, the terror. Peter appearing like an avenging angel, brutal and efficient. Saving

her

again. The sight of him, fierce and lethal, had shattered something inside her. The restraints snapped. The guilt, the shame, the careful walls she’d built around her feelings—they crumbled into dust. The hidden desire wasn’t just a flicker anymore; it was a wildfire.

Peter didn’t just fight Trent—he

erased

him. The savage crack of bone, the feral roar—it shattered Emma’s last restraint.

This was the boy who bled for her, now unleashed as a man who’d

destroy

for her. That night, trembling in her bed, not yet over the scope of the whole Trent incident, she’d touched herself after he left her room with Madison, she was gasping his name, imagining those hands marking

her

skin. Love curdled into

visceral need

.

Days ago, Sarah and Linda had gone shopping. Emma knew Peter was home, sleeping. The opportunity felt like a dare from the universe. She’d dressed carefully—not overtly slutty, but deliberately tempting: sexy shorts, a thin silk camisole that clung, no bra with her bare boobs there to see.

She’d positioned herself in the living room, turned the volume on the reality TV show ridiculously high.

’Wake up,’

she’d thought, heart pounding.

’Look at me. Really look.’

He’d emerged, sleep-rumpled, eyes darkening as they swept over her. Her pulse hammered against her ribs.

’This is it.’

But he just smiled softly, pulled her close when she shivered, and let her head rest on his chest as they watched TV.

His hand rested warm on her shoulder, heartbeat steady beneath her ear.

Devastating intimacy.

Peter never took advantage. They watched television together like that, her head drifting onto his chest, and still he did nothing but cook her food and let her sleep.

The kindness was a deeper wound than cruelty.

She wanted to be claimed, not sheltered.