I watch it happen in real time—the words right there, sitting in his mouth, close enough that I can feel his breath shape around it, and then something shuts behind his eyes like a door swinging closed on its own weight.
"Reth."
He pulls back, and something inside me withers.
“I’m no good for you, Sophia.”
“I know you think that. I know this is a perfectly normal response to whatever trauma you’ve?—”
“Don’t do that.” His jaw clenches. “Don’t fucking analyze me.”
“All I can do is fucking analyze you because you’re not giving me anything else to work with.”
“I can’t do this.” He's already moving toward the doorway.
“Reth. Please."
He stops, eyes burning as he spins toward me. “I can’t fucking touch you and know that the moment you find out, the moment you know what I did, you’re gonna wish you hadn’t let me.” He fists his hand, frustration and pain etched on every line of his face. “I can’t do that to you. Iwon’tdo that to you.”
He storms up the stairs, leaving me alone in the kitchen, my jaw still warm where his fingers were, the ghost of his words sitting in my chest like something swallowed wrong.
Everything’s wrong. Nothing’s right, and I hate not knowing if it ever will be.
"You okay?"
"No." I don't bother softening it. "I need to get out of this house. Today. Now."
Something shifts in his face—calculation, the speed of a man already running through logistics.
"Where?”
"Town. Anywhere. I don't care. I just—" My voice cracks slightly, and I hate it, hate that he can hear it. "I need to be somewhere that isn't this kitchen or this fucking house."
"Not alone."
"Ian—"
"Not alone, Sophia." His voice is firm, the same flat certainty he used the night he stood in front of that bedroom door telling me to back up. "We don't know where she is. We don't know what she knows. You're not walking out that door by yourself, not after everything it took to get him back."
"I can't keep doing this." I press the heel of my hand against my eye, the dough still drying on my fingers. "I can't keep being managed. Told to wait in hallways, told to stay inside, told what I'm allowed to know and where I'm allowed to go?—"
"I know." Something in his face softens, just slightly, the fight going out of it even as the boundary stays exactly where it was. "I know you're tired of it. I'd be tired of it too. But —”
“I’ll take her.” Andrei's voice comes from the doorway behind him, quiet, even.
We both turn. He's leaning against the frame with his jacket already half on, like he'd anticipated this exact moment before either of us finished arguing about it.
"You sure?" Ian asks.
"I need to pick up supplies anyway." Andrei looks at me, something almost kind in the otherwise unreadable set ofhis face. "She can come. Get out of the house for an hour. I'll watch her."
Ian hesitates a second longer, looking at me, weighing something I can't fully read.
"Fine," he says finally. "But you stay with him the whole time. No wandering off. You understand?"
"I understand."
"I mean it, Crazy."
