13. Reth
RETH
She’s here again.
I know before I open my eyes. The temperature drops. Not real cold—the other kind. The kind that lives inside the skull and spreads outward until your teeth ache with it, until every breath feels like swallowing broken glass.
Mary.
She’s standing in the corner where the shadow is thickest, the way she always stands now, the way she never stood in life. Mary was movement. Noise. Life spilling out of her in every direction.
This thing in the corner is the opposite of all of that. This thing is stillness so complete it has its own gravity, pulling the air out of the room, pulling the fight out of my bones.
I look.
I always look.
She’s the little girl first. Six years old.
Gap-toothed smile. Green dress with the white collar she kept trying to pull off because it scratched her neck.
She’s looking at me the way she did then—like I was already enough, like just being there was the whole job, like the world was manageable because her big brother was in it.
My chest caves in.
The love I feel for that little girl is so sharp it feels like it’s carving new wounds into old ones. I want to reach for her. I want to pick her up and hold her and tell her I’m sorry, that I failed her, that I would burn the world down if it would bring her back.
Then the blood starts.
It doesn’t arrive dramatically. It just seeps. From the corners of her mouth first. Then her ears. Then the place in her throat where—
Don’t look don’t look don’t look—
Too late.
I’m looking, and the little girl is gone, and what’s there instead is the last version of her, the one I carry like a blade in my ribs. Wide open eyes. Ruined throat. Hair dark and wet and matted. The expression on her face isn’t accusation. It’s worse.
She looks surprised. Like she never thought it would be me.
“You were there.” Valeria’s voice slithers out of Mary’s mouth. It’s everywhere at once, threaded into the walls, into the stone, into the marrow of my bones.
“You were right there, Nazareth.”
“I know what I saw.” My voice comes out wrong. Thin. Worn down. But there’s still steel underneath it. I’m still the man who survived her for thirteen years. I cling to that.
“Do you?”
Not a question. Never a question anymore. Just the shape of one, placed where a question would go, doing different work.
Mary in the corner. Her surprised eyes. The blood. My hands in my lap, heavy and useless.
I look at my hands.
The compass. The ink. The needle pointing—
Where the fuck is north?
There’s a name. There’s a name, there’s a name, there’s a—
“You killed me. The little girl you swore to protect.”
“And you betrayed me!” I shout, the words ripping out of me. Every bone aches, every muscle trembles with the effort. My skin feels too tight, too hot, stretched over something that’s about to explode. “You let them hurt me. You stood there and you let it happen!”
The craving hits then, sudden and vicious. It’s time. It’s fucking time, and she hasn’t been here yet, and there’s no bag or vial, and the need is crawling under my skin like fire ants, like something alive trying to eat its way out.
“Fuck!” My fist slams into the floor, knuckles splitting, but I barely feel it. The pain is distant. Everything is distant except the need and the guilt and the rage.
How long has it been?
Days?
Weeks?
Seconds?
Forever?
Forever… Sophia.
Gold hair. Green eyes. The weight of her in my hands. The feel of her against my chest. Her mouth on mine. Silk. Velvet. Real. The only real thing I have left.
“I need you,” I mutter, roughing my hands through my hair, pulling until it hurts. “I need you I need you I need you.”
Mary shifts. “I’m right here.”
“Not you,” I spit out. “Her.”
Her head leans to the side, the hole in her throat gaping.
“The therapist. You love her.”
My mind scatters like shattered glass. “I told her I loved her. Once.”
“Does she know who you really are?”
I nod frantically, clinging to the memory like a lifeline.
“You’ll hurt her.”
“No. No, I’ll never hurt Sophia.”
“That’s what you said about me, and now look at me.”
I don’t look.
“Look at me!” The voice erupts, slamming against the walls.
Not Mary’s voice—something wearing Mary’s voice, something ancient and wrong that climbed inside her and stretched it into a shape it was never meant to make.
Low and resonant and vibrating in my back teeth, in the base of my skull, in the place behind my eyes where the drugs live and breed.
I look.
She’s moved. She’s right in front of me now, and I didn’t see her cross the room.
The hole in her throat is wider. Something pulses inside it—dark and rhythmic, like a second heartbeat living in the wound. Her hair hangs in ropes, heavy and dark, and her eyes—Mary’s eyes—are wrong. Pupils too large. Whites too white. The expression behind them not Mary’s at all.
“Look at what you did.”
“I didn’t—” My voice splinters. “Mary, I didn’t. I was right there, I saw—”
“You were always right there!” The sound that comes out of her fills the room, fills my skull, fills every crack in me until I feel like I’m going to come apart. “Right there, and you never saved me. Not once. Not ever.”
“I tried.” The words barely make it out. The guilt is a living thing, clawing at my insides, tearing me open from the inside out. “I tried, Mary. I swear to God I tried—”
The craving spikes again, sharper this time, a wave of fire that makes my hands shake so badly I can barely keep them still. The suspense of waiting for the next hit is torture.
I know it’s coming. I know she’ll make me beg for it, and the dread of how low I’ll have to go coils in my gut like a snake ready to strike.
Valeria’s voice returns, soft and intimate, like a lover’s whisper in the dark. “She’s next, Nazareth.”
My gaze snaps up.
“Your little therapist. You’ll kill her too. Like you did me.”
“No no no no no.” I’m on my feet, pacing the length of the chain, every step fueled by raw, violent denial. “Stop. Stop it.”
“Look at her.”
I freeze.
And she’s there.
Sophia.
In the middle of the gray hell, gold hair catching impossible light, green eyes finding mine with that look—the one that says I see you, I love you, you’re perfect. She’s so fucking beautiful it physically hurts. Clean and warm and real in a room that has been none of those things.
“What are you doing here?” I want to run to her, but I keep my distance, painfully aware of how filthy and broken I am. Aware of Valeria’s touch still on my skin. “You shouldn’t be here. You should be safe. With Ian.”
“You need me,” she says softly, stepping closer.
That smile. Fuck me, that smile is enough to ruin me, shatter me, and to put me all back together.
“I do need you.” I suck my bottom lip into my mouth, not knowing what to do with the ache that’s cracking my chest wide open. “You have no idea.”
She's wearing the white shirt, the one from Paris, the one I know by heart, and her hair is catching what little light exists in this gray place and turning it gold the way she turns everything, the way she always has, like warmth is just what she is and she can't help it.
"Sophia." Her name in my mouth. Barely a sound. “I love you. I should have said it more. And I miss you. Fuck, I miss you so goddamn much.”
She looks at me, and she doesn't flinch. She never flinched. Not once. She looked at everything I am and she didn't flinch, and I loved her for that more than I've ever loved anything.
She takes a step toward me, and I jolt back.
"Don't." The word tears out. "Don't come closer. Don't—you shouldn't be here, you should be in Japan, be with Ian."
She keeps walking.
She always kept walking toward me when every survival instinct should have sent her the other direction. That was always the thing about her. That was always the thing that undid me completely.
“Please, Sophia,” I beg softly, aching for her to touch me, needing her to leave.
She reaches for my face.
Her hand is soft, warm, real. Her thumb traces the scar on my cheek the way she used to, slow and reverent, like she’s memorizing every broken piece of me.
I close my eyes because if I close my eyes maybe it stays. Maybe if I don’t look directly at it, it doesn’t disappear.
“Nazareth.”
My name in her mouth. Like she’s glad it exists. Like it’s something precious.
“Even monsters deserve love sometimes.”
She leans in and kisses me.
Not soft. Not gentle. Hungry. Her mouth crashes into mine like she’s been starving for months, tongue sliding against mine with that perfect, filthy sweetness I’d kill to taste again.
I groan into her, hands fisting in her hair, pulling her closer, desperate. She presses her body flush against mine, soft curves molding to hard muscle, and I lose myself in the kiss—deep, messy, devouring.
Her hands slide down my chest, nails dragging, and I growl against her mouth.
I cup her breasts, thumbs brushing her nipples through her shirt until they tighten under my touch. She moans into the kiss, arching into my palms, and I squeeze harder, rolling her nipples between my fingers the way she likes.
“Reth,” she breathes, breaking the kiss just enough to nip at my bottom lip. “Touch me.”
My hand slides down her stomach and into her pants. She’s soaked.
My fingers glide through her slick folds, circling her clit before pushing two thick fingers inside her. She gasps, hips rocking against my hand, riding my fingers like she can’t get enough.
Her hand finds my cock through my pants, stroking me hard and perfect, thumb brushing over the head.
“Fuck, Sophia,” I rasp, thrusting my fingers deeper, curling them against that spot that makes her tremble.
She strokes me faster, squeezing just right, and I’m so hard it hurts. I need her. I need to be inside her. Lose myself in her.
I grab her thighs, lift her, and she wraps her legs around my waist like she was made for this. I pin her against the wall, grinding my cock against her through our clothes, kissing her like I’ll die if I stop.
Her hands are in my hair, pulling, her moans filling my mouth as she rocks against me, chasing friction, chasing me.