I nod once.
Because now, we finally have something real.
Somewhere to go.
twenty-one
Liana
Waking doesn’t feel like waking anymore.
It feels like being dragged up through something thick and heavy, like my body surfaces before the rest of me does, like my eyes open before I’m fully inside them. The room doesn’t come into focus straight away. It shifts, blurs, settles, and even then it doesn’t feel real in the way it should.
For a few seconds, I don’t know where I am.
Then I feel him.
His mouth presses against my cheek, slow, deliberate, like he’s been doing it for a while before I was aware enough to register it. His hand slides into my hair, fingers threading through it in a way that might have once felt gentle, might have once meant something soft.
Now it makes my stomach turn.
“Liana,” he murmurs, his voice low against my skin. “You’re waking up.”
The sound of my name in his voice lands wrong, too familiar for something that feels this distant, this disconnected. I try to move away from him, but my body doesn’t respond properly, the motion delayed, weaker than it should be.
He doesn’t stop.
His mouth brushes lower, to my jaw, my neck, like this is something he’s allowed to take, something he’s been waiting for.
Something in my stomach twists sharply.
Too fast.
Too sudden.
I turn my head away from him, the movement clumsy, uncoordinated, and then I’m pushing up without really deciding to, my body lurching forward as nausea hits hard enough that it forces everything else out of the way.
I barely make it off the bed before I’m on my knees, my hands catching against the floor as my stomach heaves.
There’s nothing in me.
Or there shouldn’t be.
But my body doesn’t care about that.
It forces it anyway.
My head spins as I cough, my throat burning, my vision blurring at the edges as I try to catch my breath.
For a second, I just stay there.
Still.
Shaking.
He’s beside me almost immediately.
His hand comes to my back, rubbing slow, steady circles like he’s soothing me, like this is something normal, something expected.
