Page 58 of Hidden

Resting my chin on his head and shifting my weight, I rearranged us both until he was lying against me, wrapped up by my entire body. “Always,” I repeated, stroking his hair.

And that’s how we stayed.

No more words. No more pretending.

Just me, and the boy who was slowly winning my heart.

Just us, and the secrets we shared.

The two of us, me silently massaging his head, stroking his back, and him, finally relieved of all that had been burdening him.

And there we remained, long into the night, until the sun eventually came up.

Chapter 19

Vienna

Now

By the time I made it back to the trees, I already knew I shouldn’t have come.

Not because I didn’t want to be there. Not because every part of me hadn’t been dragging me back to her from the second I’d left the bar, from the second I’d walked away from Dante and Rachel and Trex and the ghosts of old grief still clinging to my skin. But because I knew, even before I caught sight of the house through the dark, that I wasn’t coming here for the same reason I always did.

This wasn’t old habits or stupid rituals. And it sure as fuck wouldn’t be enough tonight to obey and stand in the shadows, waiting and watching for proof of life.

The memory of the previous night still sat raw and open somewhere beneath my ribs, refusing to scab over no matter how many times I told myself to leave it alone.

Her hand against the glass.

Her forehead pressed softly over mine.

The way she had looked at me like I was something she still felt, something she still wanted, before stepping back and shutting me out all over again.

I had spent the better part of the day trying not to think about it, burying myself in noise and club business and old grief that had no business clawing its way back to the surface after all these years. But now, with the house looming in front of me and the balcony just visible through the dark, all roads led back to the same place.

Gabriella.

Always Gabriella.

And tonight, more than ever, I was done pretending I could keep my distance.

The grass was damp beneath my boots as I crossed the stretch between the trees and the house, moving low and quiet out of instinct more than caution. It would have been smarter to stay back, to keep to the shadows like I always had, but there was something too sharp inside me tonight, something restless and ugly and far too close to panic to let me stand still and simply watch.

Every step I took felt wrong and reckless, and yet entirely inevitable, as though I had been walking toward this moment for far longer than I cared to admit.

Her curtains were still open.

That alone made something in my chest tighten, because she had closed them on me the night before. She had looked me in the eye, touched me through the glass, and then cut me off with her own shaking hands as though she had no choice but to put the barrier back in place.

I had replayed that moment so many times in my head since then that I no longer knew which version of it was real—the one where she was rejecting me, or the one where she had looked close to breaking when she did it.

And after everything I had learnt… after hearing about the bruises, about her mother, about the way she had been kept close and hidden away at the rally like something fragile or valuable or dangerous to lose… I no longer trusted the version of events I had spent years trying to live with.

She had told me she loved him.

She had fought me to go back to him.

She had made her choice.