“Reth.” Softer this time. “Can I come in?”
I don’t say yes.
I don’t say no either.
I just stand there with my forehead against the door, heart hammering like a war drum in my chest, every instinct I’ve honed through years of blood and shadows screamingat me to keep her safe from the piece of shit on this side of the wood.
After a moment, I hear the lock turn from her side, and I step back. The door starts to open, slowly, like she’s giving me every possible second to stop her if I want to.
I don’t stop her.
My hands curl into fists at my sides, nails digging into palms that have ended more lives than I can count.
The assassin in me is already mapping the room, the exits, how fast I could drop her if the wrong memory takes over.
But the rest of me—the fucked-up, starving, scared-shitless part that loves her with every broken piece I’ve got—just stands there and lets the only good thing I’ve ever had walk straight into the dark with me.
The second I see her, I suck in a breath. She’s wearing a black shirt, not white. And there’s no blood. Just her, standing in the doorway like she’s been waiting a lifetime, eyes red-rimmed and desperate, hair a mess like she’s run her hands through it a hundred times, and she’s never looked more beautiful.
“Hi.” She looks at me, her face doing that thing—softens and breaks at the same time, like seeing me hurts and heals her in the same breath.
“Hi.” I loosen my fist, love and guilt slamming together so hard I can’t tell which is which. Part of me wants to shove her back out the door before I even think of hurting her. The rest of me—the part that’s been starving for her—wants to drop to my knees and let her wrap those arms around me until the ache stops for good.
She takes one step forward then stops, studies me like she’s waiting for a reaction.
I don’t move. Can’t. But my eyes won’t leave her. She’s real. Alive. Looking at me like I’m still hers even when I feel like the worst kind of monster.
I swallow hard, throat tight. “You shouldn’t be in here.”
“This is exactly where I should be.” Another step, close enough now that I can smell her—vanilla and orange peel and that faint trace of flour from the kitchen that says she’s been trying to hold herself together the only way she knows how. “I’m not scared of you, Reth.”
“You should be fucking terrified.”
She doesn’t flinch. Just looks at me with those green eyes that have always seen too much. “I will never be scared of you.”
I inch back, my need for her dangerously close to snapping the last thread of control I have left, every muscle locked tight so I don’t grab her and take what I want like the animal who doesn’t deserve it.
“It’s ugly, Cherry-red.”
“And I want all of it. The monster, the man, the broken parts you think I can’t handle. Let me have them.”
Her hand lifts, slow, like she’s approaching a wounded animal that might bite.
I don’t stop her. When her fingers brush my arm, light and careful over the bruises, something in my chest cracks wide open. I want to pull away. I want to pull her closer. I want to be the man she thinks I am instead of the one I actually am.
Her touch burns in the best way, soft against the mess of my skin, and it’s too much. Too good. My hand shoots up on instinct, wrapping around her wrist—not hard, but firm enough to feel her pulse hammering under my fingers.
“You keep touching me like that andI won’t?—”
“Don’t push me away.” She’s so close, her breath warm on my neck. “I can handle your ugly, Nazareth.”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
“But I want to because that’s what love is. It’s not what we do when things are pretty. Love is what we do when they’re not.”
Fuck. Guilt crashes over me, thick and choking. Valeria’s hands on me in that room, the way my body betrayed me, the sounds she made that still make me sick to remember. And then Sophia—trying to help, trying to be there—and I screamed at her like she was the enemy, like she was the one who broke me.
I hate myself for it. For all of it.
