Chapter 5: Chapter 5
He sewed the silence into the new piece.
For three days, Finn lived in a cloud of black thread and quiet fury. The ripped lace was a lost cause. He salvaged the satin choker and the thigh bands, but the body had to be entirely re-knit. Each loop of the delicate thread, each careful stitch over the foam dress form, felt like an accusation. His fingers remembered the sensation of the material giving way, the sound it made. He sewed that memory in, too.
He fixed the gown as well. Because Liam had been right. The transition at the hip was too harsh. Finn unpicked the seam with a precision that bordered on violence, his seam ripper flashing in the lamplight. He softened the line, allowing the silk to flow into the chiffon with a more organic grace. It was better. It was objectively, infuriatingly better because of Liam. The two pieces, when placed side by side on his floor—the repaired ivory gown and the resurrected black lace—now spoke to each other perfectly. One concealed, one revealed. Both bore the marks of Liam’s hands, one through critique, the other through destruction.
A week passed. A week of Liam being a ghost in the house. He wasn’t physically absent; he was just… not there. He’d leave before Finn woke, come home after Finn had ostensibly gone to bed. If they were in the same room, Liam’s eyes would skate over Finn as if he were a piece of furniture. He’d answer direct questions with monosyllables. The old bickering script was dead. In its place was a vacuum, a null space that screamed louder than any argument.
It was the avoidance that killed Finn. The cowardice of it. After the pool house, there’d been panic. After his bedroom, there’d been a pact of silence. But after the couch, there was just… nothing. As if it hadn’t even been significant enough to warrant a reaction. As if Finn was so inconsequential that he could be fucked on the living room furniture and then forgotten like a used tissue.
The anger was a cold, hard stone in his gut. It fueled him during the day, kept his spine straight. But at night, in the dark, it melted into a sickening pool of anxiety. He needed a sound, a word, anything to break the quiet. He’d have taken Liam shoving him against a wall and snarling “This can never happen again.” He’d have taken disgust. He’d have taken contempt. Anything was better than this erasure.
He started watching Liam’s patterns. The ghost kept a schedule. Late nights at the library on Wednesdays. He’d come in around 1 AM, raid the kitchen for whatever leftovers Maeve had labeled for him, and then go straight to his room.
So, on Wednesday, Finn waited.
He sat at the kitchen island in the dark, a single glass of water in front of him. The blue digital clock on the oven read 1:17. The house was a monument to silence, just the low hum of the refrigerator. He heard the key in the lock, the sigh of the front door, the soft thud of Liam’s backpack hitting the floor in the hall.
Footsteps approached. The kitchen light blazed on.
Liam froze in the doorway, his hand still on the switch. He looked tired, shadows under his eyes, wearing a worn grey hoodie and sweatpants. He saw Finn and his entire body went still, a wary animal sensing a trap.
“You’re up,” Liam said. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of unfortunate fact.
“No shit.” Finn kept his voice low, flat. He took a sip of water just to do something with his hands.
Liam moved past him, giving him a wide berth, to the refrigerator. He pulled out a container of chicken and rice, peeled back the foil. He stood at the counter, his back to Finn, and ate straight from the tub with a fork. The silence stretched, punctuated by the soft scrape of utensil on plastic.
Finn watched the tense line of his shoulders. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
Liam didn’t turn. “I’ve been busy.”
“Bullshit. You’ve been scared.”
The fork stopped. Liam’s back went, if possible, even straighter. He still didn’t turn around. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t point out that you fucked me and then decided to pretend I don’t exist? Again?” The words came out sharper than he’d intended, tipped with a week’s worth of splinters.
“Finn.” Liam’s voice was a warning, low and rough. He finally turned, leaning back against the counter, the container forgotten. His face was carefully blank. “What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say something!” The force of his own whisper surprised him. He pushed off the stool. “Anything! Tell me it was a mistake. Tell me you’re disgusted with yourself. Tell me it can’t happen again. Just… acknowledge that it did.”
Liam looked down at the floor, his jaw working. He shook his head, a short, frustrated movement. “What good does talking about it do?”
“It does this good!” Finn gestured wildly between them. “It stops this… this fucking weird purgatory you’ve got us in! I can’t stand it, Liam. The silence is worse.”
“Talking makes it real.” Liam’s eyes flicked up, meeting his for a fleeting second. There was a flash of pure, unvarnished panic in them. “If we don’t talk about it, maybe it… fades.”
“It’s not fading!” Finn took a step closer. The island was the only thing between them now. “I’m rebuilding the fucking lingerie you ripped off me. It’s not fading. It’s all I can think about. And you walking around like a haunted house is all I can think about!”
Liam flinched at the mention of the lingerie. He ran a hand over his face. “I’m sorry I ruined your work.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it!” Finn was almost pleading now, the anger bleeding into desperation. “Stop apologizing for the wrong thing. Talk to me about the other thing. The third-time thing.”
“What is there to say?” Liam’s voice rose, just a fraction, before he clamped down on it. He looked toward the hallway, paranoid about Maeve. He spoke through gritted teeth. “It happened. It keeps happening. It’s… it’s a problem.”
The word was a dull, clinical blade. A problem. Finn felt it slice deep. “I’m a problem.”
“No. This is.” Liam waved a hand in the space between them. “This… pull. This thing. It’s a problem. It’s messy and it’s wrong and it’s going to blow up our entire family. You know that. I know that. That’s what there is to say.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself, recite a prepared speech.
“So that’s it?” Finn’s voice had gone small. “It’s a problem, so you’re just going to ignore it until it goes away?”
“What’s the alternative, Finn?” Liam pushed off the counter, his own frustration bubbling over. He kept his volume down, but the intensity was fierce. “You tell me. What’s the brilliant solution? We keep doing it? We sneak around until Mom walks in on something she can’t unsee? You want that? You want to be my dirty secret?”
The phrase hung in the air, ugly and toxic.
Finn recoiled. “No,” he whispered.
“Exactly.” Liam’s shoulders slumped, the fight draining out of him as quickly as it came. He looked defeated. “There is no good answer. So I’m picking the one that doesn’t involve blowing up our lives. Yeah, I’m avoiding you. Because when I’m near you, I don’t… think straight.” He looked at Finn then, a long, pained look that finally held no avoidance. “I see you in that fucking lace and I lose my mind. I hear your voice and I want to… I don’t know what I want. It’s easier if I just don’t.”
The raw honesty was more brutal than any dismissal. Finn saw it now, the conflict that mirrored his own, carved into the lines around Liam’s mouth. It wasn’t indifference. It was a war.
“So that’s the plan?” Finn asked, his anger spent, leaving only a hollow ache. “We just… live like this? In the same house, as strangers who have these… catastrophic secrets?”
Liam didn’t answer for a long moment. He picked up his food container, looked at it, and put it back down. “I don’t know a better one,” he said, his voice utterly weary. “Do you?”
Finn stared at him. He searched for a solution, a compromise, a thread of hope in the grim logic. He found nothing. Just the hard, cold truth of Liam’s fear, which was also his own fear, reflected back at him.
“No,” Finn admitted, the word tasting like ash.
Liam gave a single, tight nod. Decision confirmed. Future mapped: a bleak, silent coexistence. He picked up the container again. “I’m going to bed.”
He walked out of the kitchen, not looking back. The light stayed on. Finn stood alone in the bright, sterile glare, listening to the sound of Liam’s door clicking shut down the hall.
The conversation was over. They had talked. And it had somehow made the silence, now officially sanctioned, infinitely worse.
And it had somehow made the silence, now officially sanctioned, infinitely worse. The house became a museum of things unsaid, every creak of the floorboard a reminder of their quiet war. Finn channeled all that frustrated energy into the final polish of his portfolio, stitching his anger into hems and his confusion into seams. When the submission portal blinked a confirmation at 11:58 PM, two minutes before the deadline, he felt nothing but a hollow sort of relief.
The automated reply was just a formality. He didn’t expect anything else. Life condensed into a numb routine: class, the couch, avoiding Liam’s haunted eyes in the hall. Then, four days later, his phone chimed with an email alert during a tedious lecture on textile fibers.
The sender name made him sit up straight: Atelier Marceau. His heart did a stupid, hopeful lurch. The body of the email was concise, elegantly formatted. They were impressed by the conceptual duality and technical execution of his submitted work. An eight-month, paid internship was available, starting in two weeks. It included a shared living space in their company housing and a stipend that made Finn’s eyes widen. It was professional, flattering, and came from the most influential design house in the city four hours north.
He read it five times in the buzzing lecture hall, the professor’s voice fading to a distant murmur. A real salary. His own space. Eight months.
He didn’t tell anyone. Not at first. The information felt too huge, too fragile. He carried it in his chest all afternoon, a secret coiled tight beside the older, heavier one about Liam. It felt like a trapdoor had appeared in the floor of his life, a way out of the crushing, silent museum. He just had to decide whether to open it.
That night, for the first time in weeks, Liam was at the dinner table. Maeve had apparently spent all day cajoling, even threatening, to get him there.
Marc, Finn’s father, was over too.
“Pass the potatoes, champ,” he said to Liam, his voice a comfortable boom. The dinner was a minefield of normalcy. Liam just grunted, pushing the bowl across the table without looking up from his plate. He moved with a stiff economy, a trapped animal playing along. The conversation limped along—Marc’s work, Maeve’s garden, the unseasonably warm fall.
Finn pushed his salmon around. The email burned a hole in his phone, in his brain. He watched Liam refuse a second helping, his jaw tight. A problem, Liam had called this. Here was a solution, served up on a silver platter.
“So,” Finn said, his voice cutting through a story Marc was telling about a problematic client. It came out louder than he intended. Three sets of eyes turned to him. Liam’s were guarded, preemptively annoyed.
“I got an email today. From Atelier Marceau.” He kept his tone flat, matter-of-fact.
Maeve’s fork clinked against her plate. “The fashion house? Finn, that’s incredible! What did they say?”
“They offered me an internship. The advanced one.” He took a sip of water, buying a second. “It’s eight months long. Paid. They have housing for interns in the city.”
The reel of his internal monologue unwound gently in the quiet
that followed the burst of joy. A new rhythm caught, a synchronicity of patterns falling into unbelievable place. Where the churning silence had been, now came this small perfect fit. The words startled him, pulled jagged from raw gray static into this neon shape called future before running sideways again.
“Finn!” Maeve shot up, rounding the table to hug him. “Oh my god, sweetie! That’s… that’s a career-maker! Those are impossible to get!” She was beaming, her hands on his shoulders. Marc was smiling, asking practical questions about the stipend.
Finn answered them mechanically, his focus narrowing to the other side of the table.
Liam had gone perfectly still. The practiced indifference, the glazed-over look of wanting to be anywhere else, had shattered. His head was up, his eyes locked on Finn. All the color had drained from his face. He wasn’t blinking. He looked like he’d been sucker-punched in the solar plexus, all the air stolen, his careful armor rendered useless.
“Eight months?” Liam said. His voice was strange, stripped of all affect, just raw sound.
“Yeah. Starts mid-November.” Finn held his gaze, challenging him. See? A solution.
“But… the city. That’s four hours away.” Liam stated it like a diagnosis.
“I know. Room and board is provided. I’d be making my own money.” Finn repeated the facts, each one a brick in the wall between this life and a new one.
“Are you serious?” The question wasn’t excited. It was hollow, disbelieving.
Maeve swooped back in, too thrilled to notice the undercurrent. “It’s the biggest opportunity, Liam! Think of the connections! The experience! Oh, I’ll miss you like crazy, Finny, but this is it. This is what you’ve been working for.” She was already talking about visiting weekends, what he’d need to pack, her words a rapid, joyful cascade.
Liam pushed his chair back from the table. The legs scraped against the floor with a jarring screech. He didn’t stand, just sat there slightly away from the group, his forearms on his knees. He stared at the space between his feet, his brows knitted tight.
He looked up again, his warm brown eyes seeking Finn’s. The panic in them was no longer hidden. It was front and center, wild and stark, completely dismantling the careful distance of the past weeks. It wasn’t the panic of a brother who’d miss his step-sibling. It was the panic of a man watching his complicated, terrible, inevitable reality simply get up and walk away.
“Wow,” Liam breathed out, the word barely audible over Maeve’s enthusiastic planning. He ran a hand over his mouth, his gaze never leaving Finn. “Just… wow.”
He didn’t say congratulations. He didn’t ask any more questions. He just sat there, marooned in the bustling celebration, watching Finn as if he were a ship sailing from a shore Liam had never intended to leave. The silence between them now had a brand new, explosive quality, heavy with the unasked question screaming in Liam’s eyes: What do you mean you’re leaving?
The silence between them now had a brand new, explosive quality, heavy with the unasked question screaming in Liam’s eyes: What do you mean you’re leaving?
Dinner unraveled after that. Liam stood abruptly, mumbling something about a headache, and vanished. Maeve and Marc’s excited chatter became a distant buzz to Finn, who mechanically finished his food, each bite like sawdust. The house felt different already, its walls expanding and contracting with this new possibility. He went to his room and closed the door, leaning against it. He pulled out his phone and reread the email, the offered escape and promise burning.
Later that night, after dinner, Liam comes to Finn’s room.
A soft, hesitant knock broke his concentration hours later.
Finn was hand-stitching a loose bead on the repaired black lace, the lamplight pooling on his work. He froze, needle poised. He knew the weight of that knock. “It’s open.”
Liam entered. He’d changed into a threadbare t-shirt and sweatpants, his hair damp from a shower. He stood just inside the doorway, filling it, then turned and closed the door softly. The click of the latch was definitive. He didn’t speak. He just looked at Finn, his expression a landscape of quiet turmoil.
Finn is working on a piece but he stops when he sees Liam in the doorway. Liam comes in and closes the door but he doesn’t say anything.
Finn let the lace and needle fall to his lap. The air was thick with the chlorine-scented ghost of the pool house, the remembered heat of the couch. He waited. Liam’s silence was a physical pressure.
So Finn does. He says if Liam asks him not to go he won't.
“If you ask me not to go,” Finn said, his voice surprisingly steady in the quiet, “I won’t.” The words hung there, simple and immense. “Just say the words. Tell me to stay.”
It's heartbreaking in its own way. Finn would give up the most lucrative opportunity to get his name in the fashion industry if Liam asked him to stay.
The offer was devastating in its totality. He was handing Liam the weapon to dismantle his future, and he was doing it willingly. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic bird. Every dream of seeing his name on a label, of financial independence, of being somebody—he would bundle it up and set it aside for the chance to be something to Liam.
And Liam can't. Not because of the opportunity but because if Finn stays they're only going to explode into each other and it'll break their family apart.
Liam’s eyes closed. A muscle ticked in his jaw. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He looked physically pained, as if Finn’s words were stones he had to digest. When he opened his eyes, they were glassy. “I can’t,” he rasped.
“You can,” Finn whispered, a desperate correction.
“No.” Liam’s voice gained a shred of strength, edged with a metallic finality. “If you stay… we both know what happens, Finn. We break. We keep breaking until there’s nothing left to glue back together for Mom to see. We live in this house and it’s just a countdown. A really fucking painful countdown.” He took a ragged breath. “You have to go.”
If they stay, live in the same house, it'll be like a bomb waiting to go off.
The truth of it was a cold wave. Liam was right. The pool house, Finn’s bedroom, the couch—they were each a smaller detonation. Living here, day after day, in the unbearable tension of want and prohibition, would eventually cause a blast that would shatter Maeve’s world. There was no peaceful coexistence. There was only conflagration or distance.
Finn looked down at the black lace in his hands, the intricate pattern he’d rebuilt. He gave a single, sharp nod. Acceptance. “Okay.”
Liam stood there for another moment, as if he might say something else. He didn’t. He just turned, opened the door, and left, pulling it shut behind him with a softness that felt like a funeral dirge.
So Finn slowly packs his things over the next few weeks.
The following weeks passed in a strange, slow-motion ritual. Finn began the process of extraction. He packed methodically, starting with the non-essentials. His expansive fabric collection was rolled, sorted, and boxed. Books followed. He left his everyday clothes for last. The room, which had always been a chaotic extension of himself, began to look staged, impersonal.
He and Liam orbited each other with a new, grim formality. “Pass the salt,” “Your mom said there’s mail for you,” “The towel rack in the main bath is loose.” Their dialogue was purely transactional, stripped of all history and heat. It was the silence of a treaty, not a war. The war was over. They had both surrendered.
Maeve helped him pack with a bittersweet enthusiasm, her eyes sometimes filling with tears she’d quickly blink away. “I’m just so proud,” she’d say, folding a sweater. “You’re going to take that city by storm.” She didn’t see the way Finn’s gaze would drift to Liam’s closed door.
and on the day he leaves Liam doesn't see him off. Liam is nowhere to be found.
The morning of his departure dawned clear and brittle. Finn loaded the last of his boxes and suitcases into his beat-up car. Marc was there, slapping him on the back, promising to visit. Maeve clung to him, weeping openly now, planting kisses on his cheek. “Call me when you stop for gas, sweetie. Let me know you’re safe.”
Finn hugged her back tightly, his throat closed. He looked over her shoulder, scanning the driveway, the front yard, the house.
Liam’s truck was gone.
His bedroom window, from this angle, revealed nothing but a drawn blind.
He had vanished.
“Where’s Liam?” Maeve asked, pulling back, wiping her eyes and looking around. “He said he had an early study group. That boy, I swear, his timing.” She shook her head, disappointed.
Finn pretends it doesn't hurt as much as it does.
“It’s fine,” Finn said, forcing a bright, unconcerned smile onto his face. It felt like a rip in his skin. “Probably couldn’t handle my epic departure anyway. Too sentimental for him.” He kept the smile in place as he got into the driver’s seat, as he started the car, as he waved one last time at the two figures on the front steps.
He turned the first corner and the smile collapsed.
He drove the four hours north with the radio blasting static, because music felt too specific, too emotional. His chest ached with a dull, pervasive hurt. The absence of a goodbye was its own kind of message, louder and crueler than any fraught farewell could have been. It was an erasure for the road, a final confirmation of the problem they were both trying to solve. He pretended, to the empty car and the stretching highway, that the hollow feeling was just hunger, or nerves. He pretended so hard he almost believed it, until a random song fragment or the sight of two figures on a roadside made the ache sharpen, sudden and acute, forcing him to grip the steering wheel tightly and stare straight ahead at the retreating asphalt.