“What did you take?” I asked quietly.
She ignored the question completely. “I thought…” she murmured, voice so low it trembled. “You didn’t want me.”
My heart tore open.
“I want you, of course I fucking want you.”
She touched my face with ice-cold fingers, eyes unfocused but searching. “If you’re not real, don’t tell me.”
“I’m real,” I said, pressing my forehead briefly against hers. “And you’re freezing.”
When I set her into the passenger seat, she slumped sideways immediately, still wrapped in my jacket.
I shut the door, rounded the hood, and started the engine, turning the heat up to maximum.
She was shivering so hard it made my chest ache. The heater tried, but it couldn’t reach that kind of cold. I kept one hand on the wheel, the other firm against her leg, rubbing gently, not letting go. She was here. Alive. And I was still holding on, if only by a thread.
She faded in and out, her eyes fluttering closed and snapping open again, disoriented.
She blinked slowly, like I was flickering in and out of existence. “You’re… you’re a hallucination,” she mumbled. “My brain’s making you up ’cause it knows I— I need you.”
My jaw tightened. I slid my thumb over the inside of her wrist, feeling her pulse. “I’m not in your head, Malaya,” I said quietly. “I’m right here. Feel that?”
She swallowed hard, eyes wide. “I—I’m sorry. I took something. I don’t feel right. Everything’s spinning. I don’t know where I am.”
She pressed her palms to her temples like the pressure might hold her together.
I eased up on the gas, forcing air into lungs that barely worked. “Malaya,” I whispered, reaching for her leg. “Look at me. You’re with me now. I’m gonna take care of you.”
But she didn’t seem to hear me.
“My father…” she whispered, gaze fixed on nothing. “He’s laughing. He won’t let us be together. He never will.”
My jaw clenched. “Your father?”
She nodded, then shook her head like the story kept slipping through her grasp. “He said you’d never love me. That I’m nothing.”
“Who told you that?” I asked, my voice sharper than I intended. I softened it. “Who said that to you, Kira?”
She leaned her forehead against the window, rain cascading past her reflection. “Ruslan,” she breathed.
Something violent flared in my chest.
“Who the fuck is Ruslan?”
She blinked, slow and heavy. “He… gave me this.” Her hands fumbled with her hoodie pockets.
“What?”
“The pill,” she breathed, staring at her hands like they didn’t belong to her. “He promised it would make it hurt less. That I wouldn’t have to think about you anymore.”
Everything clicked—the unconscious bodies, the bed, the drugs. Ruslan. That was the guy.
She closed her eyes. “He kissed me. I didn’t want it. I told him no but… he wouldn’t stop.”
My vision tunneled, the air turned thin. “He touched you?” It wasn’t even a question. It was a fucking trigger.
She nodded, tears slipping down her cheeks. “He said he loved me. But I can’t… I don’t want him. I only want—”
