15. Sophia
SOPHIA
Ihear the car before I see the headlights.
I’ve been sitting on the front step for hours, maybe longer. Time stopped meaning anything the moment Ian left to get him. He told me to wait inside where it was warm. I lasted eleven minutes.
Now the fall mountain air wraps around me like a damp shroud—crisp leaves and pine and the faint rot of things dying beautifully—and I don’t feel any of it.
I don’t feel anything except the crushing, endless ache that’s lived inside my chest since the night Ian pulled me away from him and into the plane.
The sky overhead is vast and mercilessly indifferent, scattered with early autumn stars that don’t care that my entire world might be coming back to me in pieces.
I watch the road, and I force myself to breathe—one shallow inhale after another—because if I let my mind go past the next breath, I’ll break. I’ll drown in the what-ifs that have been poisoning me for weeks.
What if he’s gone?
What if he’s hurt?
What if the man who comes back isn’t mine anymore?
Headlights finally cut through the trees. My heart lurches so violently I gasp aloud.
I stand on shaky legs, half-thinking I might run to meet them, but the car pulls in too fast—gravel spitting, dust swirling like smoke from a dying fire.
Doors open. Ian steps out first, and a fragile wave of relief crashes over me, like something long-held breaking open. Ian’s alive. Unharmed. And he’s moving with that tense, purposeful stride that says the mission isn’t over yet.
Andrei follows. Then they both turn to the back seat, reaching in, helping—
I press both hands over my mouth to trap the sob already clawing its way out.
“Nazareth,” I whisper, the name fracturing on my tongue like a word I’ve been holding in my mouth for too long, afraid to swallow, afraid to speak.
He’s on his feet, but only barely. His body sags between Ian and Andrei, weight distributed like a man whose limbs have forgotten they belong to him.
His chin is down, hair grown out and matted, obscuring most of a face I can still read from twenty feet away—every line of it worn down to something hollow.
The driveway light catches just enough of him to show me the damage—the sharp jut of collarbones where I once rested my cheek, the way his shoulders curve inward like he’s trying to shield whatever shattered fragments of his soul remain.
He’s been unmade. Piece by careful, cruel piece. And I feel it—the specific, private grief of watching someone you love discover they were worth destroying.
He lifts his head.
Our eyes meet across the driveway.
My heart shatters all over again.
Those piercing blue eyes I've carried with me through every sleepless night look at me like I'm a cruel hallucination.
There's no joy there yet. Only raw, disbelieving terror.
The kind of look that breaks something open in my chest because I don't understand it.
I don't know what put it there. I don't know what happened behind those walls to make him look at me like I might dissolve if he blinks—but I feel the weight of it.
It takes all but a few moments for something to flicker beneath the damage. Something desperate and aching and him fighting its way through the haze. Recognition. Need. Love so fierce and fragile it hurts to witness.
“Reth.” His name tears out of me, small and cracked and full of every tear I’ve swallowed for too long.
He says nothing. But his eyes stay locked on mine, and his body—barely upright, barely his—turns toward me like a compass finally finding true north. Not a choice. Just gravity. Just the inevitable pull of two souls that were never meant to be apart this long.
I don’t decide to move. My feet find the ground on their own.
Gravel bites my feet. Cold fall air stings my face. None of it registers. Ian sees me coming and steps aside without a word, and then Reth’s arm slips from his shoulder and I’m crashing into him—arms wrapping around his waist like I can fuse our broken pieces back together.
He’s real. Warm. Solid. Breathing.
“Thank God.” A sob rips out of me, and it’s ugly and desperate with weeks of longing and helpless waiting pouring out all at once.
I bury my face in his chest and cry like the world is ending and beginning in the same fractured breath.
These aren’t graceful tears. They’re the ones I’ve carried every night I lay awake wondering if he was still alive, if I’d ever feel his arms around me again.
The kind of crying that comes from a place so deep it feels like it might never stop.
His arms come around me. Slowly at first. Trembling.
Like his body is relearning how to hold.
How to trust. How to want something good.
Then his grip turns fierce—sudden and almost bruising—both arms locking around me with the desperation of a man who’s stopped believing solid things exist. He pulls me in like he’s afraid the universe will steal me away again.
His face drops into my hair, and I feel him breathe me in—long, shuddering pulls, his whole chest expanding like he’s trying to take enough of me inside him to survive whatever comes next. A broken sound vibrates against my temple, and I’m barely able to breathe around it.
“Reth,” I choke out into his shirt, voice wrecked. “I missed you so much it almost killed me.”
His arms tighten until it hurts in the best possible way, and his lips press to the top of my head—the softest, most deliberate thing. Then, barely audible against my hair, “You’re not real.”
Those words detonate somewhere behind my sternum.
I can’t breathe. I can’t speak. I can only stand there while something ancient and grief-soaked inside me finally, finally comes undone—not breaking, but dissolving, like a fist that’s been clenched for weeks suddenly, painfully opening. My whole body shakes with it.
I pull back just enough to see his face, and the sight steals the air from my lungs.
Those piercing blue eyes are sunken, ringed with bruises of exhaustion that go far deeper than lack of sleep.
His face is pale and gaunt, cheekbones too sharp, lips cracked and dry.
There’s a faint but constant tremor in the hands clutching me.
He looks like a man who’s been systematically erased.
Carefully. Cruelly. By someone who knew exactly which pieces would hurt the most.
“Are you okay?” The question is stupid, useless, but it falls out anyway. Of course he’s not okay. They took him from me and broke him in ways I’m terrified I’ll never fully understand. The guilt of it—of not being there, of not being able to stop it—twists like a knife in my gut.
He stares at me with that heartbreaking, searching look. “You’re not… you’re not real,” he whispers again, voice cracking with devastating doubt.
I cup his face with both hands, thumbs brushing over the too-sharp edges of his cheekbones, his scar. His eyes flutter closed at my touch, like it hurts and heals at once.
“I’m real,” I whisper fiercely, tears streaming down my face. “I’m right here, Nazareth. I’m real. I never stopped waiting. I never stopped loving you. Not for one second.”
A long, trembling moment passes before his hand comes up to cover mine, pressing it harder against his cheek, holding on with what little strength remains.
“I’m sorry,” he rasps, the words thick with guilt and pain and bone-deep exhaustion. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“What? No. No, Reth.” I cup his face with both palms. “You didn’t hurt me.”
“I tried to stop—”
“Don’t.” My throat closes completely. I rest my forehead against his, our tears mixing. “You’re safe now. You’re home. I’ve got you. We’ll figure out the rest together.”
His shoulders finally drop. Something inside him releases—a tiny, heartbreaking surrender—and the weight of weeks of torture seems to press down on him all at once. He leans into me like I’m the only thing keeping him upright, a quiet sob shaking his frame.
Behind me, Ian’s voice comes soft. “Sophia.”
I don’t turn right away. I keep my hand on Reth’s face, his hand over mine, eyes closed, and I memorize every fragile second—the cold fall air, the gravel beneath us, the way he’s breathing me in like I’m oxygen after drowning—before the world intrudes again.
“The doctor’s here,” Ian says gently. “We need to get him inside.”
I nod, but it takes everything in me to step back. Reth’s hand tightens on mine—desperate, involuntary, the grip of a man whose body has decided I’m safety. I squeeze his fingers once, promising.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell him. “I’ll be right there. Every step. I swear it.”
Ian and Andrei move in smoothly, supporting him toward the door.
The doctor follows, already speaking in low, urgent tones about fluids and monitoring.
I walk behind them, hand pressed to the small ceramic Gerald in my pocket, and follow the man I love through the door of the house he built for me before I even knew he existed.
My heart is so full it aches. So grateful it bleeds. So sad for what they stole from him—for the strong, fierce man who was reduced to this trembling shell—that I don’t know how I’ll ever stop crying.
But he’s here.
He’s home.
And I’ll love every broken piece of him until he believes it’s real again.