“So…what happens now?” He repeats his question from before, voice muffled against my stomach.
The answer crystallizes in my mind, sharp and clear. “We move forward.”
“Together, or apart?” He doesn’t dare to lift his head.
The silence stretches, thick with the thrum of his breath against me, with the heat pooling lower in my body. I tighten my grip in his hair—not enough to hurt, just enough to draw him closer, to feel the subtle give of him yielding to me.
“Together,” I whisper.
The word lands between us like a verdict passed.
His hold on my waist firms and in response, I curl my hand deeper into his hair andpull, drawing his head in until his face is pressed fully against me.
He groans, low and guttural, the sound vibrating through my core, as his breath sears through the thin barrier of fabric. The air between us shifts—still laden with the weight of what’s just been said—but threaded through with a heat that promises what comes next.
TWENTY-THREE
nathaniel
I wake slowly.For the first time in weeks—months, perhaps—I feel rested. My body is heavy with something I scarcely recognize: ease. There’s no edge of vigilance, no sharp corner of dread. Only a quiet that feels almost foreign, a calm I do not trust.
Memory seeps back in fragments. Yesterday returns to me in a trickle, each image another jolt of recognition. The frantic drive across the city. The hollow terror of standing outside her dorm, of knowing the truth could no longer remain buried. The sick weight in my chest as I showed her everything I had hidden—the proof of what I’d done, the reach of my control.
And then, her silence. The unbearable stillness of her face as she absorbed it. I felt myself splinter under it, watching her weigh me, terrified that I had finally revealed too much. The moment she turned from me, I thought it was over.
I fell to my knees and I begged. I begged her not to go. I begged her to let me remain by her side.
It was the first time in my life I had ever brought myself so low, but there was no shame in it. If anything, it felt inevitable. There isn’t a worthier cause than her—no height I would notabandon, no dignity I would not surrender. And if there is anyone I would allow to trample me into the ground, it is Olivia.
Every truth I laid bare should have driven her from me. And yet—miraculously, impossibly—she stayed.
The memory is dizzying in its sweetness. To be chosen despite the rot she now knows lives in me is euphoria—heady, intoxicating, almost unbearable in its mercy.
The hours that followed were a fevered blur. I couldn’t let her go. I held her like my body alone could bind her to this place, to this life with me. I kissed every inch of her skin, relished the taste of her, the way she broke apart in my arms again and again. I gave myself over to worship—slow, desperate—until she was boneless beneath me, sex-drunk and sated, her lashes fluttering shut only when exhaustion claimed her. Even then, I kept her close, hoarding each one of her exhales, greedy for the reassurance of her weight pressed into mine.
But the memory of her surrendering to me in the dark does not lie quiet.
It unfurls inside me, swiftly sharpening into need—thick, immediate. I want her again. I want to have her plush body flush against mine, taste the sleep-heavy sweetness of her skin, feel her shiver awake beneath my hands.
The hunger sends me rolling toward the other side of the bed, reaching instinctively for her?—
But the sheets are cold.
I jolt upright, eyes sweeping the room.
She’s gone.
My hand falls into emptiness. No lingering heat, no hollow pressed into the mattress, no trace of her perfume caught in the sheets. Only cool linen, unmarked and indifferent, as if she had never been here at all.
A flicker of unease catches in my chest. For a moment, I wonder if I dreamed it—if the night was nothing more thanthe invention of a desperate mind, an exquisite hallucination conjured from fear and longing.
Could I really have imagined something so vivid?
It would be a particularly cruel trick of the mind, to give me such a vision only to strip it away. Cruel, and effective. Because now I can’t tell if I’m waking from a dream or stumbling into a nightmare.
I force myself to think. Wallowing does me no good. What I need are next steps. Find her. Persuade her. Secure her return. That’s the only path forward. It’s what I’ve always done—dissect a problem, strategize, execute.
But the clarity doesn’t come. My lungs constrict instead, a pressure rising as though something heavy has settled against my sternum. My breaths are shorter, shallow without meaning to be. My pulse drags loud in my ears, faster than it should.
