For the first time in a long, long time—
I feel proud.
Not of myself. Of her.
Of the way she came apart and put herself back together without asking permission. Of the woman standing in front of me now, unafraid of her shadow.
She fires again.
This time, she hits the mark.
Dead center.
The wine bottle is empty, the vodka in my glass long forgotten. While healing I shouldn’t drink, but I’ve never been one to follow the rules.
The old wood creaks beneath us as we settle into the wide chair on the porch tucked against the wall, half shielded from the wind. The forest spreads out in front of us like a secret too big to hold, shadows stretching, the sky turning dusky blue at the edges. I sit first, wrapping the heavy blanket around my shoulders, and then she follows, without hesitation this time, sliding into my lap like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
She curls into me, knees drawn up between us, her bare thighs brushing my legs, and the blanket drapes over both of us now. My arms lock around her without thought. It should feel too intimate. Too much. But it doesn’t. It feels necessary. Like something our bodies remembered before our minds could.
Her head rests against my chest, and I can feel her heartbeat through the cotton of my shirt. Slow. Steady. I want to memorize it.
We stay like that for a while. My hands tracing lazy circles across her back beneath the blanket. She smells like soap and cold air and something distinctly her. It undoes me slowly. Morethan pain. More than torture.
I rest my chin against the top of her head.
“Why me?” she whispers.
I blink. “What do you mean?”
She leans back slightly, just enough to look at me, the weight of her eyes pinning me in place. “You could’ve picked anyone. To take. To hold. To punish. Why me?”
My jaw clenches. Not in anger—shame.
“I didn’t pick you,” I say.
“I was escaping,” I continue. “Nothing about it was clean. It was blood and calculation. And when I saw you, standing there on your bare feet and nothing but glass in your eyes...”
I let the sentence hang. Her expression doesn’t waver, but her body stills, every breath, every twitch of muscle. She’s listening with everything she has.
“I felt like playing with you,” I finish.
Her eyes flash, something electric behind them, but she doesn’t pull away.
“You looked breakable,” I murmur. “So I broke you.”
Her throat works, a small motion. The only one she lets herself show.
“But I was wrong.”
My hand rises, slowly, and I trace her collarbone with the back of my fingers. Light. Careful. Reverent. “I wasn’t attracted to you because you looked breakable. You were a mirror.”
“A mirror?” she breathes.
I nod. “You reminded me of the boy I buried to become what I am. You reminded me of before—before I belonged to men with blood on their cuffs and promises in their lies. And I hated you for it.”
She doesn’t move, doesn’t even blink, but I feel it; the stillness of prey that knows it’s staring into the mouth of the wolf, and chooses to stay anyway.
“I couldn’t stand your crying,” I admit, voice low, almost too quiet to be heard. “So I turned the volume off on the camera.”
