On the drive back, I called my guys, sending them out to check the area around her apartment and to start the hunt for the men who’d shot at us.
Her silence weighs down on me more than words ever could.
It signifies the absence of the woman I snatched from that alley who fought and argued and fled down a fire escape. This quiet ghost drifting across my polished concrete floor is someone else entirely.
Back and forth.
She paces from the elevator to the windows and back again, face emotionless, body on autopilot. She’s shutting down.
Her borrowed clothes hang loose on her frame. My black t-shirt swallows her torso. Even with the drawstring of my sweatpants pulled taut around her waist, the rolled-up cuffs still drag on the floor. With each pivot, her worn sneakers squeak against the concrete.
A metronome marking time in my cavernous space.
I didn’t expect this reaction. I prepared for anger, fear, pleading, tears…even her panicked, nerve-induced babbling.
But there’s nothing.
Only an emptiness that doesn’t match the woman who wielded a broken lamp like a weapon and threatened to kill me if I touched her sister.
I open a cabinet, pull down a tumbler and a crystal decanter, and pour myself two fingers of vodka. The routine is familiar, comforting in its predictability. I toss back half the drink in one swallow, feeling the burn trace a line down my throat.
Across the room, Aurora completes another circuit. Back and forth.Squeak. Squeak.Back and forth.
The light that drew me to her has vanished, extinguished somewhere between the gunfire and this moment. I’ve seen that expression before, on men right before they break. On witnesses who’ve seen or been through too much. It’s the look of someone retreating deep inside themselves.
Unreachable.
That’s what she’s become.
Her silence bothers me more than I care to admit.
A fierce, possessive instinct rears its head inside me. She’s under my protection. For all intents and purposes, she’s mine. And fuck, do I want to bask in her light again.
Pouring a second drink, I hold it up in silent offering. She doesn’t even glance my way. Just keeps pacing, eyes fixed on some middle distance only she can see. Her path never varies from the windows to the elevator doors and back again as she forms a perfect rectangle across my living space, over and over.
When I set the glass on the table, the clink of crystal against marble fractures the silence. Still no reaction. Her indifference needles under my skin, an irritant I can’t shake.
This isn’t what I wanted when I brought her here. I wanted the fire, the fight, and the vibrant, chaotic energy that made her so different from the cold, calculated world I inhabit. From the moment we met in the bar, I became obsessed, and now I’m left with this ghost.
This shell of a woman.
She breaks her pattern and cuts toward the kitchen. For just a second, I think she’s finally acknowledging my presence and accepting what I’ve offered.
Instead, she wanders past the glass on the counter, past me, and to the sink. She turns on the tap, cups her hands beneath the stream, and brings them to her lips.
A cold, sharp sensation twists in my gut as she drinks like a stray animal. The message is clear in every line of her body.
I will take nothing from you.
The rejection stings more than I care to admit. I didn’t rescue her from that alley, protect her, and bring her into my sanctuary just to watch her retreat into herself. I didn’t chase her across the city and shield her with my body from bullets just because I wanted this hollow shell.
I want the woman who called me her boyfriend and kissed me in the bar. Who fled down a fire escape and fought back when cornered. Who looked me in the eye and lied with conviction.
This madness stops now.
In three long strides, I’m across the kitchen. I grab a clean glass from the cabinet, fill it with water, and shove it directly into her line of sight. “Drink.”
She doesn’t wince at the harshness in my voice. Simply continues scooping water to her mouth with cupped palms and vacant eyes while refusing to acknowledge me.
