My head lolled against his shoulder.
The world tilted.
“I’m... so cold,” I murmured, the words barely audible, torn thin by chattering teeth and a throat that felt swollen shut.
“I know,” he said quietly.
There was no impatience in his voice. No anger. Just certainty.
He turned and began walking—long, deliberate strides carrying us away from the graves, away from the rising black water, away from the pale shape floating face-up behind us. Mud sucked at his boots, rain soaked us both to the bone, but his hold never faltered.
I tried to speak again.
Tried to explain.
Tried to thank him.
Tried to tell him I wasn’t the monster he believed me to be.
But the cold had sealed my throat completely now. My vocal cords felt locked in ice, every attempt at sound dissolving into a soft, broken whimper that shuddered out of me without words.
He didn’t seem to expect speech anymore.
He didn’t push.
He didn’t demand.
He simply adjusted his grip—subtle, careful—tucking me closer against his chest, angling my body to shield me from the wind as much as possible. His bare skin burned through the soaked fabric between us, heat radiating into me in small, precious increments.
Rain lashed down harder, stinging my face, my eyelids, my lips.
Lightning split the sky with a violent crack, white light flooding my vision for a heartbeat before plunging everything back into darkness.
My sight began to tunnel.
The edges of the world dimmed, sound warping, thunder stretching into a distant, underwater roar.
My body shook uncontrollably, muscles seizing, breath coming in shallow, uneven gasps.
I felt his heartbeat beneath my cheek.
Steady. Strong. Unrelenting.
It anchored me.
Even as my consciousness frayed, even as the night pressed in from all sides, that rhythm told me one undeniable truth:
He had meant to hurt me—but instead, he had torn open a wound I had carried for years and finally let it bleed out. Watching the therapist die didn’t fill me with horror the way it should have; it filled me with something I had never been allowed to have. Justice. The kind I had longed for in silence, the kind I had convinced myself would never come.
And now he was holding me.
Not dragging. Not restraining.
Holding me—carefully, as though I mattered.
For a man who had promised to bury me alive only hours ago, the contradiction felt impossible—and yet, here it was, solid and undeniable.
His steps never slowed.
