I stared up at him, startled, searching his face.His eyes weren’t black after all—just very dark brown, deep enough to hide things until light hit them exactly right.For a heartbeat, I saw what lived there.Pain.Conflict.Regret that didn’t fit with the version of him I needed to believe.
“Sorry,” I repeated, my voice scraping out rough.“You’re sorry.”
His throat worked before he answered.“Yes.”
“For killing my father?My mother?My brother?For dragging me here, tying me up?Which part exactly are you sorry for, Gabriel?”
His flinch was tiny—so slight someone else might’ve missed it.I didn’t.The sound of his name coming from me hit somewhere he didn’t guard well enough.His hands lingered on the edge of the blanket, then fell away slowly.
“All of it,” he said.A breath later he added, “None of it.I don’t know.”
It wasn’t the answer I expected, but it was the truth.Raw, uneven, messy in a way none of his movements ever were.And somehow that made it more terrifying.
“Why didn’t you kill me?”I asked, softer, because the question had been sitting in my blood since the closet.“Everyone else is dead.Why am I alive?”
He stepped back slightly, putting inches between us like he needed distance to build his walls again.The softness in his expression vanished, replaced by the blank mask he wore like armor.
“I don’t know.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
He didn’t wait for whatever I might say next.He turned away, walking back toward his chair with shoulders heavier than before.Every step carried a weight he hadn’t shown earlier—like the apology and whatever emotion drove it cost him more than the killings had.
He sat and leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees, hands clasped between them.His head bowed under the fire glow.For the first time, he didn’t look like a weapon.He looked like a man trying to breathe inside a reality that didn’t make sense anymore.
I pulled the blanket tighter around myself despite the voice in my head screaming that comfort from him was betrayal.Warmth seeped deeper anyway.My muscles eased without permission.My body wanted survival more than it wanted vengeance, and survival didn’t care about principles.
The fire crackled hard, shooting sparks up the chimney.One ember landed near his boot and flared out.He didn’t move.He didn’t react to the heat or the noise.He just stared at the floor with an expression that said he wasn’t here in the room at all.
I should have hated him cleanly.It would’ve been easier.But the man who shot my family and staged the crime scene was the same man who had wrapped a blanket around my shoulders carefully enough not to jostle a single injury.The same man who bandaged my wrists with trembling hands.The same man who whisperedI’m sorrylike the words scraped him raw.
He was both monster and human.Both executioner and caretaker.Both danger and something I didn’t have a name for yet.
Outside, the storm clawed at the cabin walls, shoving snow into every gap, burying us hour by hour.No one knew where I was.No one was coming.We were trapped together—two people bound by survival and violence and consequences that couldn’t be undone.
Gabriel lifted his head slowly.Firelight reflected in his eyes and the pain was back—unavoidable, unmasked for one flicker of a heartbeat.It hit me harder than I wanted.We held each other’s gaze in silence, an understanding forming in the air between us whether we liked it or not.
Then he looked away, and the moment fractured.The walls came back up.But something had shifted anyway.Something had changed.
We were still captor and captive.Still killer and survivor.Still enemies.
But now we weren’t strangers.
I sank back into the chair, blanket wrapped tight, exhaustion dragging at every muscle.The warmth made my eyelids heavy.I fought sleep, but the fight had been long, and adrenaline only lasted so long.
I didn’t let my eyes close until I’d memorized the look on his face—the guilt, the grief, the contradiction.
The storm raged.The fire burned.And we sat in the same room, breathing the same air, knowing nothing about what tomorrow would bring except that we would face it trapped together.
I don’t know when the shift happened.One moment I was forcing my eyes open by pure will, the next I was floating somewhere far away from the cabin, from the ropes, from Gabriel, from everything.It wasn’t sleep exactly.More like a blackout wrapped in warmth.A place where my body finally stopped fighting and my mind finally stopped screaming.
When awareness clawed its way back, it wasn’t gradual.It came all at once—heat on my face, the weight of the blanket over my shoulders, pressure at my wrists where the ropes held me, the dull ache in my skull.The fire had burned down to a steady core of orange coals.The storm still punished the cabin walls, wind thrashing against the shutters, snow hissing through invisible cracks.
And Gabriel was exactly where he’d been when I slipped under.
His chair hadn’t moved.His posture hadn’t changed.He sat with his elbows braced on his knees, hands clasped loosely between them, gaze locked not on the fire but on me.Watching.Observing.Maybe guarding.Hard to tell with him.
