SOPHIA
Idon’t sleep.
I tell myself I will, so I lie down on the narrow couch the doctor pushed against the wall, close my eyes, and listen to Reth breathe six feet away like it's the only thing anchoring me to the earth. I count his breaths the way I counted days on that bench in Japan. One. Two. Three. Still here. Still fighting. Still mine.
I get to forty-seven before the breathing changes.
I'm sitting up before I've even decided to move, heart slamming. The lamp’s still on, turned low, casting everything in sickly amber.
He's restless now in a way that turns my stomach—small movements at first, his hands twitching, fingers curling and uncurling like they're searching for something that isn't there. His jaw clenches so hard I hear his teeth grind. The muscles in his face twist with things sleep should never produce.
Then his legs.
That's what stops my breath completely. His legs jerkingunder the covers—sharp, involuntary kicks, knees pulling up then slamming down like his body is trying to run from something inside his own skin.
The doctor warned me about the muscle cramps, the withdrawal. I understood the words. I didn't understand this—watching Reth's legs thrash like they belong to someone else, like his own muscles are punishing him for the weeks he was kept dependent. Before the doctor left, he administered the first dose of meds, explained it would ease the worst of it, said it would take time to level out.
Whatever the medication is doing, it isn't enough yet.
His skin is already slick with sweat, the collar of the shirt soaked dark at the neck. Goosebumps ripple across his arms in violent waves even as sweat pours off him. Burning and freezing at the same time. His body has no idea what temperature it's supposed to be, swinging between extremes with the cruelty of a system in full revolt.
I cross the room fast, knees hitting the floor beside the bed.
"Reth." I keep my voice low, steady. "I'm here. You're in the mountain house. You're safe. I've got you."
He doesn't hear me. Or hearing me changes nothing. He's shivering violently now despite the sweat, teeth chattering hard enough that I can hear them from here, pulling his knees tighter to his chest like he can make himself small enough to disappear inside the pain. His eyes, even closed, are doing something wrong—rapid movement underneath the lids, chasing something through a dark I can't see into.
Terror claws up my throat.
This is Reth.MyReth.
The man who moved like violenceand certainty, who took out seven, eight, nine men in order to keep me safe. Now he’s curled up like a broken child, shaking so hard the bed frame rattles, sweat pouring off him in rivers while his body betrays him in ways I can’t fix.
The sight of it rips something inside me wide open. I feel sick. Helpless. Like my love is worthless against whatever poison they pumped into him for weeks.
“Reth,” I whisper, voice cracking. My hands hover over him, trembling, terrified to touch him and make it worse, but even more terrified to do nothing. “Please… come back to me. I’m right here. I’ve got you.”
A low, guttural groan tears out of him, and it breaks me. The sound of a man enduring something rather than experiencing it, something beyond the reach of language or intention, something purely physical and purely merciless.
I’ve sat across from people in withdrawal. I’ve worked in settings where I've seen it, heard it, documented it clinically. I have never—not once—sat on the floor beside a bed where the person withdrawing was someone I loved.
There’s no professional distance for this. There’s no clinical framework that reaches the part of me sitting here on this floor counting the sounds he makes and knowing I can’t stop any of them.
His eyes fly open, darting around the room in rapid sweeps, taking inventory, the eyes of someone whose brain is trying to determine which reality it surfaced into and trusting none of the options.
I reach out and lay my hand on his arm. Gentle. Just contact. Just the information that something warm and present exists in this room beside him.
He jolts like I've burned him. Wrenches back so violentlythe headboard slams against the wall.
“Shit, Reth. I’m sorry. I didn’t think…” Exactly. I didn’t fucking think. Withdrawal strips the body of its ability to filter sensation, that everything becomes too much, that being touched can feel like being struck, and all I can think of doing is touching him. Holding him. Kissing him until everything’s okay again.
"Reth—"
“No.” He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. “You’re not real. You’re not here.”
"I'm real." Leaning closer. Keeping my voice even through sheer force of will. "Reth, look at me. It's Sophia. I'm right here. I'm not leaving you."
His breathing is ragged, too fast, the panicked gasps of a man whose nervous system is misfiring on every channel simultaneously. Sweat pours down his temples and drips from his jaw onto the sheets. His legs kick again—harder this time, the cramp visibly seizing through the muscle, his whole body curling around it—and the sound that comes out of him, the sound of that level of pain finding the only exit available to it.
