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Since then, I’ve been losing my fucking mind waiting for her to show up.

I kept thinking maybe she wouldn’t come. Maybe the detective I hired hadn’t done his job properly and she wasn’t here after all. Maybe I’d come all the way to Romania for nothing, chasing the hope of finding her when she was somewhere else entirely.

Then the door finally opens.

She appears in the doorway, and for one brutal second, I forget how to breathe.

A week.

It’s been a fucking week since I last saw her.

Yet the moment my eyes land on her, something inside me shifts. My lungs finally draw in air, even if it barely feels like enough. I know I’ll never breathe easily again if I don’t get her back in my life, but just having her here—within reach—is all it takes to bring me back to life.

I don’t get up from the armchair.

I stay where I am, watching her tremble in the doorway, her body betraying everything she’s trying so hard to hide.

And I wait.

I want more from her. A reaction. More words. Anything that might tell me how to approach her, what she’s feeling, what state she’s in after seven days of being away from me.

“I asked you a question, Zayn,” she snaps, moving closer to the bed.

Her backpack is still lying where it fell when she saw me, abandoned on the floor as if she forgot it existed. Her expression is no longer fearful, either.

Now she looks at me with pure contempt.

I don’t know if that’s better.

It hurts just as badly.

“You disappeared for so many days,” I finally say. “And the only reason I let you stay hidden this long was because I thought you needed time.”

Her back is turned to me, but I hear her laugh.

Fake. Bitter. Venomous.

“You thought I was hiding?” she asks, her voice sharper than before. “I left because I have nothing left to discuss with you, Zayn Thomas.”

My name sounds like a sentence coming from her lips now, her accent so thick with emotion that I can barely understand her.

“You thought I needed time?” She turns her face to me, fury blazing across her face. “Time for what? To get used to the fact that you fucked other women?”

She doesn’t even wait for an answer because she doesn’t want one.

She wants to let it all out, to throw every accusation she’s been carrying at me.

And me?

I let her.

That’s why I came, after all.

“Women. Plural.” She laughs bitterly, shaking her head. “You had sex with three women at the same time. And I was stupid enough to think what I gave you was enough.”

I open my mouth to speak, but she raises a hand, throwing me a warning look.

“You thought I needed time to make peace with the fact that I started a relationship with a younger man who apparently needs all kinds of sexual adventures with models and actresses and every polished woman imaginable?”