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Chapter Nine is about interruption.
As Rhys prepares to leave Charleston, the weekend already closing in on itself, he packs with intention—ready to return to the life he knows how to manage. The reunion is over. The questions feel unanswered but contained. Departure promises control.
Then there’s a knock at the door.
Maddox stands on the other side—unexpected, unplanned, and suddenly real. There’s no time to prepare, no space for strategy. Thought falls away, and what replaces it is instinct. Twenty years of restraint, deferral, and unanswered what ifscollapse into the present moment.
What follows isn’t imagined or rehearsed. It’s immediate, physical, and irrevocable. The thing Rhys has carried internally for decades finally takes form—not as fantasy, but as reality.
Chapter Nine is the pivot point of Negative Space: the moment when absence gives way to presence, and the past—long held at a distance—steps fully into the room.
🎧 Content note: Explicit sexual content; emotional intimacy; mature themes.
