All Chapters of PINNED BY MY STEPFATHER (MxM): Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Chapter 73Derek’s POVThe talks continued in short sessions over the next week. Sometimes only Mom and me. Sometimes all three of us. The rules stayed firm, Marcus left when she said the time was up, no overnight stays, no assumptions that the old patterns could slide back into place. Each conversation ended when she decided it ended. None of them fixed anything outright. They just kept the door from closing all the way.One evening she asked me to stay after he left. The apartment felt larger with just the two of us in it. The kitchen still held the shape of the three chairs around the table. She didn’t move to the couch. She stayed where she was, hands wrapped around a mug that had gone cold, and waited until the sound of the front door closing had fully settled.“I need to know something,” she said. Her voice was quieter than it had been during the joint talks. “When you

Chapter 75Derek’s POVThe next joint conversation with Mom and Marcus happened on a Sunday afternoon. She set a two-hour limit and kept to it. Marcus arrived at the time she gave him, sat in the chair she pointed to, and waited with his hands on the table the way he always did now. I sat to her right. The kitchen felt the same as it had in the earlier talks, ordinary light, the clock ticking, the weight of everything still unsolved sitting in the middle of the three of us.She started with the practical questions.“I need to talk about what it would take for me to even consider spending limited time in this house again,” she said to Marcus. Her voice was controlled. “Not moving back in. Not returning to the old pattern. Limited time. Under rules. I need to know if either of you can handle that without the secrecy turning back into a habit the second my back is turned.”Marcus answered first. “I can handle the rules. I can leave when you say leave. I can stay out of spaces you don

Chapter 77Derek’s POVMom asked for a conversation without Marcus present. She said it in the morning before she left for the clinic, plain and direct, and told me she wanted to talk when she got home. No joint session. Just the two of us. When she came back that evening she didn’t go to the kitchen table. She sat on the couch and waited until I sat down on the other end. The change of location felt deliberate, like she needed a different shape for this one.“I need to know if you can forgive yourself,” she said. Her voice was quiet but steady. “Because if you can’t, every conversation we have is going to keep circling the same shame, and I’m not sure I can build anything on top of that. I need to know what I’m working with when I look at you.”The question landed harder than I expected. I looked at my hands, then at the dark television screen, then

Chapter 79Derek’s POVThe talks kept going. Some were harder than others. Some ended earlier than planned when Mom hit a limit she couldn’t push past that day. Progress was uneven. Honesty stayed the only consistent rule. Marcus followed every boundary she set. I stayed in the room when she asked me to. Neither of us pretended the anger had turned into something softer just because the conversations continued.One evening after a particularly difficult session, the three of us sat in silence at the kitchen table longer than usual. Mom had asked a question about trust that neither of us could answer cleanly, and the air had gone tight. She finally set her mug down and said, “That’s enough for tonight. I can’t carry any more of this today. Marcus, I need you to leave.”He stood without argument. “I’ll wait for you to set the next time.”“I know you will,” she said. “That’s the only reason these talks are still happening.”I walked him out. We didn’t speak until we reached his car a b

Chapter 81Marcus’s POVThe temporary apartment still smelled like nothing. That was the first thing I noticed every time I unlocked the door. No leftover coffee. No detergent from someone else’s laundry. No trace of the life I had built and then broken. Just clean walls, a bed I hadn’t fully unpacked into, and the quiet that came with a place that didn’t hold any shared history.I set my keys on the counter and stood there longer than I needed to. The last month of careful conversations at her kitchen table had worn something down in me. Not wanting. That was still there, steady and unchanged, sitting under everything else the same way it had since the beginning. What had worn down was the old reflex to manage every room I walked into. Derek was doing the work of staying present in his own choices. I was trying to do the same from this side of the rules she had set.My phone lit