Her head tipped forward.
“Maksym,” she breathed. “I love him.”
My heart shattered in silence.
She looked at me again, dazed. “Are you… really here?”
“I’m here,” I said, my voice barely holding.
She looked at me with the faintest smile—the first since I’d found her—and let her head fall back, finally surrendering to the exhaustion dragging her under. Her body slackened, sinking into the seat, all resistance draining from her limbs. I reached for her and pulled her close, one arm around her while the other stayed fixed on the wheel, guiding us forward through the rain.
By the time I reached my place, she was unconscious. I parked, hurried around to her door, lifted her into my arms. She was soaked, limp, freezing.
I carried her upstairs like something sacred and dying in my arms. Each step felt like walking through a nightmare I couldn’t wake from. When I reached the bedroom, I laid her down on the bed.
Her clothes clung to her like wet paper, stiff with cold. I stripped them off, hating every second of it—hating how lifeless she looked beneath. I’d worshiped this body. Now it looked like a body, not her.
I wrapped her in blankets—layer after layer of duvets and throws until all that was visible was her face. Then I stripped of my own wet clothes and changed quickly into something dry. I climbed in beside her, pulled her gently against my chest, and held her like the world might still take her away.
She was trembling—fragile, broken, mine. I pressed my lips to her temple, my voice a broken whisper. “Don’t ever do that again. You scared the hell out of me, Malaya.”
Maybe she heard me, because a second later her eyes fluttered open—soft, unfocused, and uncertain.
Her lips barely moved. “He said… you’d never love me,” she whispered, voice splintered. “That I was just something you used. I couldn’t live with that. Is it true?”
She looked at me like my answer might kill her.
I held her face between my palms, steadying both of us. “Don’t believe that,” I said, throat raw. “I didn’t know how to say it without feeling like I was handing you a weapon against me. But I love you. You’re my whole damn world.”
“I thought I imagined it,” she mumbled, lids heavy. “All night I kept telling myself it wasn’t real. But it was. I knew it was.”
She closed her eyes again, and I couldn’t stop watching. Couldn’t stop holding her. Each breath she took was proof I hadn’t lost her.
“Tomorrow, I’ll say it right,” I whispered. “That you’re my beginning and my end. That I didn’t know how to love before you. And that I don’t care who I was—I only care about being yours.”
But before morning, there was one more thing I had to do.
She finally slept—real sleep this time. Her breathing evened out, the tension slowly loosening its grip on her body. I watched her for a long moment, committing the sight to memory, then carefully slid out of bed. I tucked the blankets closer around her shoulders, kissed her hair, and stepped away before I could talk myself out of it.
The rage had nowhere to go but forward.
I pulled on my coat, grabbed my keys, and drove back through the rain, knuckles white on the wheel. I almost lost her because of him. He drugged her. Crawled into her head. Put his hands on her. The thought kept looping, sharpening with every mile, until it was all I could see.
Valeria’s place was dark and quiet when I arrived. I let myself in without a sound. They were still out cold on the bed, bodies slack, oblivious. I ignored Valeria and went straight for him.
His pockets were stuffed—little baggies, unlabeled pills, scattered tabs of things I didn’t recognize but knew too well. Enough poison to keep half the city numb for a week.
I clenched my jaw and grabbed him by the collar. He was completely gone, reeking of cheap highs and worse intentions. Valeria murmured something, stirred slightly, but didn’t wake.
I yanked him off the bed by his sweater, the fabric bunching tight in my fist as I hauled him like dead weight and dragged him across the floor, his limbs knocking against the bed and the doorframe. He began to stir halfway through the hallway,a low groan vibrating from his throat, something slurred and incoherent spilling from his lips.
In the living room, I hurled him down hard. His head thudded against the floorboards, and his eyes snapped open—confused, panicked.
His eyes met mine.
Terror snapped him fully awake. “You—”
I didn’t give him time to speak. I sat on him and made him swallow his own choices—one by one, grinding them down his throat with my palm. He tried to fight. He failed.
