SOPHIA
I'm three muffins deep into another failure when I hear the stairs.
Not the careful, weighted footsteps I've gotten used to over the past week—Ian's deliberate tread, the doctor's brisk efficiency, Andrei's near-silent movement through the house. These are slower. Uneven. Someone testing whether their legs are going to do what they're told.
I don't turn around right away. I keep my hands in the bowl, flour ghosting up to my elbows, the dough underneath my fingers too wet again because I keep adding extra liquid out of some misplaced hope that this time it'll fix itself.
"You're burning something."
His voice. Low. Closer than I expect.
I look at the oven, then at him, standing by the counter in sweatpants and a shirt that hangs looser than it used to.
"I'm not burning anything."
"You are. I can smell it." He nods toward the oven without moving. “Third rack, probably. You always put the tray too low when you're not paying attention to what you're doing."
I stare at him. "How do you know that?”
"I watched you bake a thousand times, Cherry-red.
" He says it plainly, no apology in it, like the surveillance and the intimacy are just facts that happened, neither good nor bad, just true.
"You do it every time you're somewhere else in your head.
Third rack. Burnt bottoms. You never notice until the smoke alarm does. "
I open the oven. He's right—the bottom of the tray is already going dark. I pull the muffins out, set them on the rack to cool even though they're already lost, the same useless mercy I've extended to every other failed batch this week.
"You used to watch me bake," I say. Not accusing. Just turning the fact over. "What else did you used to watch?"
"Everything." He crosses into the kitchen, slow, careful with his balance, and stops a few feet from me. "The way you talk to yourself when you're stressed. The way you forget you're hungry until you're furious about it."
"That's a strange thing to remember about a stranger."
"You were never a stranger to me." His eyes hold mine, steady despite everything else about him that's been unsteady for days.
I wipe my hands on the towel at my hip, buying myself a second, because something about the directness of him right now—present, lucid, actually here instead of somewhere behind his own eyes—is doing something complicated to my chest.
"You finally decided to leave the room.” My gaze meets his.
"I wanted to see you not through a door."
The honesty of it lands harder than I'm prepared for.
"Okay," I say. Careful. "You're seeing me."
"I am." His gaze moves over me—the flour in my hair, the dough smeared on his old shirt that I’m wearing, the exhaustion I know is sitting under my eyes because I've stopped pretending it isn't there.
Something in his expression shifts, want and grief tangled together so completely I can't tell where one starts.
“You look tired."
"I am tired."
"I did that."
"You didn't do anything except survive." My voice comes out sharper than I mean it to, the frustration of eleven days finding an exit it hasn't had until now. "I'm tired because loving someone through a locked door is exhausting. Not because you did something to me."
He flinches slightly. Doesn't argue.
I place the kitchen towel on the counter, my hands still trembling slightly. “Can I ask you something?”
He watches me like he already knows what I’m about to ask, those winter-blue eyes dark and guarded, but I see the storm underneath—the same storm that’s been tearing me apart since the moment they brought him back.
“Why are you shutting me out?” My voice cracks. “I mean, I can’t even pretend to know what you went through, what that woman—”
Reth flinches hard, tears his gaze from mine and stares down at the floor like it might swallow him whole.
I clear my throat, stepping closer even though every inch feels dangerous.
“What I mean is, I thought… I thought after Paris and Greece, after everything, we were in a place where nothing trying to keep us apart could touch us anymore. And now… since I got you back, it feels like it’s the only thing that matters.”
“You are the only thing that matters,” he rasps, the words rough, almost angry, but his eyes stay locked on me like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he looks away.
“Then why is there a door between us?” I whisper, my chest aching with how close he is, how much I need him to let me in. “Why won’t you let me near you?”
“Why are you still here?” he asks, ignoring my question. “It doesn’t make fucking sense, you still being here. I kidnapped you. I took you away from your life, ruined your fucking life. And that front door is wide open right now. Yet you’re still fucking here.”
“Because through all the reasons I have to walk out that door,” I say, stepping into his space until I can feel the heat of him, “I found one reason to stay. You. Even when you’re like this—broken, pushing me away, convinced you’re going to destroy me—I still choose you.
I still love you. And I’m not leaving, Reth. Not ever.”
He grabs my waist and pulls me against him.
My breath catches at the sudden crush of his body—the solid wall of his chest, the fierce dig of his fingers into my hip.
The world funnels down to the shape of his lips—a heat so total it runs straight up my spine and sets the rest of me on mute.
All I hear is my own heartbeat and his breathing.
All I feel is his hands on me, and the quiet clench of my thighs.
His lips part as he leans in, then inches back, teasing us both with the idea of kissing, and I catch myself going after him, chasing the promise of his mouth like I’m starved for it.
The space between us feels alive, charged with everything we’ve been holding back—the fear, the guilt, the bone-deep need that makes my fingers curl into his shirt like I could pull him inside my skin if I just held on tight enough.
He makes a low, broken sound in his throat, somewhere between a groan and a curse, and his forehead drops to mine. His breath is ragged against my lips, his body trembling with the effort of holding back.
“Sophia…” The way he says my name, like it’s life, sends another shiver through me. “I don’t know how to do this without breaking you.”
“You won’t break me,” I whisper, my hands sliding up to frame his face. “Just let me in. Let me love you the way you are right now.”
His fingers flex on my hips, pulling me impossibly closer, and for one suspended heartbeat, I think he’s finally going to kiss me. Instead, he closes his eyes, jaw tight, fighting a war I can feel in every rigid line of his body. The tension is so thick it hurts.
“You…” He stops, hand falling to my ass, squeezing me against him, letting me feel the outline of his cock through his sweatpants. “You have no idea what I’ve done.”
“I don’t ca—”
He grabs my jaw, fingers digging deep, his lips a breath from mine. “You have no idea how profoundly I fucked up, Cherry-red.”
“I told you, I don’t care.”
“You should.” His gaze settles on my mouth. “You should absolutely fucking care. Because what I did…”
He stops.
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. I won’t do 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 of his 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."
"I said I understand."
He doesn't look fully convinced, but he steps back anyway, and that's apparently as close to permission as I'm going to get.
I don't go change. I catch my reflection in the dark window glass on the way to the door—flour still dusted through my hair, dried batter smeared up one forearm and across the front of Reth's old shirt, the one that still smells faintly like him underneath the cinnamon—and some small, distant part of me thinks I should probably look presentable before I leave the house.
I don't care.
Let the whole world see exactly what loving him costs right now.
Andrei holds the door. I step out into air that doesn't smell like flour or guilt or eleven days of waiting, and for the first time since the driveway, I breathe.