He’s real. Warm. Solid. Breathing.
“Thank God.” A sob rips out of me, and it’s ugly anddesperate with weeks of longing and helpless waiting pouring out all at once. I bury my face in his chest and cry like the world is ending and beginning in the same fractured breath. These aren’t graceful tears. They’re the ones I’ve carried every night I lay awake wondering if he was still alive, if I’d ever feel his arms around me again. The kind of crying that comes from a place so deep it feels like it might never stop.
His arms come around me. Slowly at first. Trembling. Like his body is relearning how to hold. How to trust. How towantsomething good. Then his grip turns fierce—sudden and almost bruising—both arms locking around me with the desperation of a man who’s stopped believing solid things exist. He pulls me in like he’s afraid the universe will steal me away again.
His face drops into my hair, and I feel him breathe me in—long, shuddering pulls, his whole chest expanding like he’s trying to take enough of me inside him to survive whatever comes next. A broken sound vibrates against my temple, and I’m barely able to breathe around it.
“Reth,” I choke out into his shirt, voice wrecked. “I missed you so much it almost killed me.”
His arms tighten until it hurts in the best possible way, and his lips press to the top of my head—the softest, most deliberate thing. Then, barely audible against my hair, “You’re not real.”
Those words detonate somewhere behind my sternum. I can’t breathe. I can’t speak. I can only stand there while something ancient and grief-soaked inside me finally, finally comes undone—not breaking, butdissolving, like a fist that’s been clenched for weeks suddenly, painfully opening. My whole body shakes with it.
I pull back just enough to see his face, and the sight steals the air from my lungs.
Those piercing blue eyes are sunken, ringed with bruises of exhaustion that go far deeper than lack of sleep. His face is pale and gaunt, cheekbones too sharp, lips cracked and dry. There’s a faint but constant tremor in the hands clutching me. He looks like a man who’s been systematically erased. Carefully. Cruelly. By someone who knew exactly which pieces would hurt the most.
“Are you okay?” The question is stupid, useless, but it falls out anyway. Of course he’s not okay. They took him from me and broke him in ways I’m terrified I’ll never fully understand. The guilt of it—of not being there, of not being able to stop it—twists like a knife in my gut.
He stares at me with that heartbreaking, searching look. “You’re not… you’re not real,” he whispers again, voice cracking with devastating doubt.
I cup his face with both hands, thumbs brushing over the too-sharp edges of his cheekbones, his scar. His eyes flutter closed at my touch, like it hurts and heals at once.
“I’m real,” I whisper fiercely, tears streaming down my face. “I’m right here, Nazareth. I’m real. I never stopped waiting. I never stopped loving you. Not for one second.”
A long, trembling moment passes before his hand comes up to cover mine, pressing it harder against his cheek, holding on with what little strength remains.
“I’m sorry,” he rasps, the words thick with guilt and pain and bone-deep exhaustion. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“What? No. No, Reth.” I cup his face with both palms. “You didn’t hurt me.”
“I tried to stop?—”
“Don’t.” My throat closes completely. I rest my forehead against his, our tears mixing. “You’re safe now. You’re home. I’ve got you. We’ll figure out the rest together.”
His shoulders finally drop. Something inside him releases—a tiny, heartbreaking surrender—and the weight of weeks of torture seems to press down on him all at once. He leans into me like I’m the only thing keeping him upright, a quiet sob shaking his frame.
Behind me, Ian’s voice comes soft. “Sophia.”
I don’t turn right away. I keep my hand on Reth’s face, his hand over mine, eyes closed, and I memorize every fragile second—the cold fall air, the gravel beneath us, the way he’s breathing me in like I’m oxygen after drowning—before the world intrudes again.
“The doctor’s here,” Ian says gently. “We need to get him inside.”
I nod, but it takes everything in me to step back. Reth’s hand tightens on mine—desperate, involuntary, the grip of a man whose body has decided I’m safety. I squeeze his fingers once, promising.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell him. “I’ll be right there. Every step. I swear it.”
Ian and Andrei move in smoothly, supporting him toward the door. The doctor follows, already speaking in low, urgent tones about fluids and monitoring. I walk behind them, hand pressed to the small ceramic Gerald in my pocket, and follow the man I love through the door of the house he built for me before I even knew he existed.
My heart is so full it aches. So grateful it bleeds. So sad for what they stole from him—for the strong, fierce man who was reduced to this trembling shell—that I don’t know how I’ll ever stop crying.
But he’s here.
He’s home.
And I’ll love every broken piece of him until he believes it’s real again.
16
