SCARS💔| Sullivan Monroe

🕰️ 4:17 PM | October 12 | Monroe Estate — Upstairs Hall

The Monroe estate was beautiful in the way enormous houses often were—polished stone, dark wood, tall windows, and rooms large enough to make footsteps sound intrusive. Sullivan’s mother had spent the better part of an hour walking you through it with carefully practiced warmth, pointing out kitchens, staircases, medication cabinets, emergency numbers, and the private suite that would now be yours. She called it your home while you’re here twice. Both times, something in her expression suggested she knew her son would hate the phrase.

The upstairs corridor was quieter, family photographs gradually replacing paintings until one image stopped being family entirely. Sullivan Monroe stared down from an enormous framed campaign photograph taken before the accident—before the scars, the cane, the surgeries, and the partially drawn curtains. He stood beneath expensive studio lighting in an open black shirt, dark hair swept carelessly from his forehead, one hand in his pocket and that infamous smile aimed directly into the camera. Beautiful felt almost too ordinary a word for him. He looked untouchable, like the kind of man magazines invented ridiculous titles for because simply calling him handsome wasn’t profitable enough. His mother slowed when she noticed where your attention had gone. “That was taken about four months before—”  “Before I became significantly less decorative?” The voice came from behind you, low, smooth, and cutting. Sullivan stood several yards down the corridor with one hand resting against the wall and a black cane planted beside his foot. The resemblance to the photograph was almost cruel. The same dark hair, the same sharp jaw, the same eyes—except one no longer focused quite as cleanly as the other. Irregular scarring carved through the right side of his face and disappeared beneath the collar of a dark sweater, while his posture carried the subtle imbalance of someone disguising pain through sheer stubbornness. His mother’s shoulders tightened. “Sully.” He glanced toward the photograph. “What? It saves us the awkward part where everyone pretends not to compare.”

Then his eyes settled on you. There was no embarrassment in his expression, not outwardly. Only challenge. He looked at you like he was waiting for the smallest flicker of shock so he could punish you for it. His mother quietly resumed the tour, opening the next door before realizing too late which room she had chosen.

The bedroom was entirely different from the rest of the house. Cream curtains, pale bedding, a vanity, dried flowers inside a crystal vase. It was spotless, yet strangely abandoned, as though nobody had slept there in months but nobody had been willing to admit its occupant was never coming back. Sullivan stopped behind you. His mother went completely still. “Oh. I didn’t mean to—”

“My fiancée’s room.” His mother turned immediately. “Sullivan, that isn’t necessary.” “No, I think it is.” He stepped closer, the quiet tap of his cane breaking the silence between each uneven stride. “She stayed here whenever she visited. Before the accident, mostly.” His gaze drifted around the room without really looking at anything. “She stayed afterward too, for a while. Very devoted. Sat beside the hospital bed. Held my hand. Told me scars didn’t matter. Told me nothing could make her stop loving me.”

His fingers tightened around the cane. “Then the bandages came off.” The room seemed to shrink. His mother closed her eyes. Sullivan finally looked directly at you. “Three months.” His tone was almost conversational. “That’s how long she lasted once everyone realized this”—he gestured lazily toward the damaged side of his face, then lower, toward the body hidden beneath expensive clothes—“wasn’t temporary.”

“Sully, enough.” His jaw flexed. “She returned the ring through my assistant.” For the first time, the sarcasm slipped. Only for a second. Then it was gone. His eyes moved toward the immaculate room behind you, toward belongings nobody had moved, and whatever softness had surfaced hardened beneath something colder. “So there’s your second lesson on the tour.”  His mother looked stricken. “There is no lesson.” Sullivan gave a quiet, humorless laugh. “There’s always a lesson.” His attention shifted back to you, studying you with that unnervingly perceptive stare, the famous face from the photograph still visible beneath everything the accident had done to it. “The man downstairs in all those photographs had people lining up to stay.” His grip tightened around the cane. “This one has to pay them.”