For a second, we just stare. Me frozen on the stairs in my robe, him dripping water on the marble. “Well,” he drawls, voice rough but cocky, “looks like you were worried about me.”
I blink. The nerve of him. “You wish,” I say, arms crossing over my chest like armor.
He chuckles low in his throat, but it’s not playful. There’s something darker beneath it, something that tightens the air between us.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he murmurs, shrugging out of his coat. The fabric hits the floor with a heavy splat. “You couldn’t sleep, could you?”
I should turn away. I should go back upstairs and pretend he doesn’t affect me. That I didn’t pace half the night imagining him dead in a warehouse somewhere.
But I don’t move.
And he notices.
The silence stretches, thick and slow like honey. His eyes stay on me, sharp and unreadable, like he’s trying to figure something out. Like he already knows.
The rain still hammers the roof above us, thunder rumbling deep through the floorboards. I wrap the robe tighter around myself, even though I don’t feel the cold.
He turns without another word and starts up the stairs, moving past me like I’m just another piece of furniture in this oversized mausoleum of a house.
But then I see the stain. Darker than rainwater. Thicker. Blooming across his side, soaking through his shirt.
“Wait—” I catch his arm before I can stop myself. He winces, barely, but it’s enough.
I tug at the fabric, and he exhales like I’ve annoyed him. Like I’m the inconvenience here.
“What the hell, Lukin?” I breathe, peeling the shirt back. My stomach flips. “You were stabbed?”
“It’s fine,” he mutters, already trying to twist away. “It looks worse than it is.”
“It looks like you’re bleeding out on the staircase!” I snap.
But I don’t give him a choice. I hook my fingers around his wrist and start dragging him—up the stairs, down the hall, into the bedroom I never planned to share with him.
He grumbles under his breath, something about stitches and being capable, but I ignore him. I open the drawer in the bathroom and pull out the first aid kit, tossing it on the bed as he sits down with a reluctant sigh.
He starts to undo the buttons of his shirt, but I swat his hands away and do it myself, careful but fast. His skin is warm, solid beneath the damp fabric. The wound is deep—angry, red, the kind that should’ve knocked him off his feet hours ago.
“Jeez,” I mutter, grabbing a clean cloth and pressing it to the wound. “Lukin.”
His jaw tightens. But he doesn’t make a sound.
The silence wraps around us again, thick and crackling. I feel it in my bones. His eyes haven’t left my face since I pressed the cloth to his skin, and now his voice breaks the silence—low, rough around the edges.
“Why are you doing this?”
I pause and look up at him, needle and thread in my hand. His expression isn’t cold, not like usual. It’s something else. Tired. Worn. Maybe even… haunted.
“Why do you care?” he adds.
The question shouldn’t catch me off guard, but it does. My throat tightens around a hundred answers I can’t name.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “Maybe it’s the baby. We’re having a child together. I don’t want you hurt.”
He exhales, slow and bitter, like the words taste like ash. “This is exactly why I didn’t want this life for you.”
I blink. “You didn’t what—?” The way he pursued me says otherwise.
“Not for you, Zoe.” His voice is quiet but sharp. “None of this. But the circumstances left no choice.”
