KAEL
"That night…" She said. "I found you half passed out in your office and took you home, you kept muttering that name in the car."
I saw the look on her face.
Pity—just for a second. Quick as a blink. But I caught it. That softening around her eyes, the slight parting of her lips, the way her shoulders relaxed like she wanted to hold something fragile. Me.
I hated it.
I hated the way she looked at me like that. Like I was something broken she wanted to put back together.
I hated how vulnerable I was getting with her, how I kept letting parts of myself slip through the cracks when I'd spent years sealing them shut. She wasn't supposed to see this part of me. The hollow, aching piece of me that never healed after Ivan. The version of me that still dreamed in blood and silence.
And yet… the warmth in her gaze.
It killed me. And it revived me all at once. I wanted to tell her to stop looking at me like that. To not care. To not see.
Because what if I lost her too?
