I had barely taken the first three steps when his voice cut through the silence.
It wasn’t the controlled Rafael I had grown used to.
It wasn’t even the cold, calculating man who spoke of death like strategy.
This voice was strained and broken.
“Zara...” he whispered.
My breath stalled.
“...Zara, no... don’t fucking give up on me.”
My fingers curled instinctively.
His voice sharpened, rising with something that sounded nothing like control.
“Don’t! I won’t be able to continue existing if you die... just stay alive, okay? Please!”
A pause.
A harsh inhale.
Then again, louder, fractured with desperation:
“Fucking please, stay alive!”
My chest tightened painfully.
I turned my head toward him even though I couldn’t see him, as if that would somehow make sense of what I was hearing.
My blind eyes stared into nothing, but my body reacted as if I could still interpret the scene.
He wasn’t here with me anymore.
Not in this moment.
He was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere I couldn’t reach.
“Please...” he gasped, breath turning ragged now. “Please... please...please, Zara...”
The words hit me like a physical blow.
My stomach dropped so sharply I had to steady myself against the air itself.
Even in sleep, even in vulnerability, she was still there.
Still the part of him I could never compete with.
A strange ache spread through my chest.
I stood there, listening to him suffer in a place I couldn’t enter.
And for the first time since I had met him—
I understood something I had been avoiding.
The safety I had felt in his arms earlier hadn’t come from freedom.
