Page 42 of Hidden

He had never done that before.

Even the first time he had come this close, there had been control in it. A line he hadn’t quite crossed, even as he stood right on the edge of it. Then, it had felt dangerous, but measured. Like he understood what was at stake.

Now… now it felt like he didn’t care. Or worse, like he had nothing left to lose.

My fingers curled into the pillow beneath me, my body staying perfectly still even as everything inside me began to unravel.

What was he doing? Did he not understand how reckless this was?

If anyone saw him… my heart stuttered painfully at the thought, the image forcing itself into my mind before I could stop it. Nico. The club. What they would do if they caughthim here, lurking outside my window like this, like he were something that belonged to me.

Like I belonged to him.

A shaky breath left me, my throat tightening as I forced the thought away. He would be dead before he even had the chance to fight back. And it would be my fault. Just like it almost had been before.

The memory pressed in, uninvited and unwelcome, sharp enough to make my eyes sting all over again. The last time. The choice I had made. The way I had torn us apart with my own hands because it had been the only way to keep him safe.

I had let him go.

I had watched him walk away.

I had destroyed the only thing that had ever felt like it was mine.

And now he was here.

Undoing it all, step by step, breath by breath, until there was nothing left of the distance I had forced between us.

My gaze locked onto him, tracing the outline of a man I knew as well as I knew myself, even now, even after everything. There was something different about him, something in the way he held himself, in the tension that radiated from him even through the barrier between us.

As our eyes connected, I saw his breathing falter, shuddering against the glass in shallow puffs. His nostrils flared, his hand clenching into a tight fist.

He looked… wrong.

Not physically. Not in any way that I could easily explain.

But I felt it.

The same way I had always felt him.

Something had shifted. Something inside him had cracked.

And standing there, pressed so close to the glass, breathing like that, like he needed to see me, like he needed to be as close as he could possibly get without breaking through entirely…

It was desperation.

And every part of me understood that. Every weak, broken, utterly ruined part of me understood the wild, frenzied desperation. Understood the need to be close, even when it would destroy you. Understood the way the past could reach out and drag you back under, no matter how hard you tried to escape it.

Understoodhim.

My fingers tightened further, nails pressing into the fabric of the pillow as I fought against it, against the pull that had never truly gone away.

This was wrong.

All of it was wrong.

He shouldn’t be here and I shouldn’t be looking back at him.

I shouldn’t feel anything other than fear at the sight of him standing outside my window, risking his life for something that no longer existed.