Chapter 38
Sleeping next to him for the first time was disturbingly easy. They say you relax more when you’re beside someone you love—or someone you can’t stop thinking about to the point that it’s almost embarrassing. And that was exactly what happened to me.
After I don’t know how many times we fucked, we finally passed out in his bed, and I swear my mind wouldn’t shut up about him even then. For the first time in years, I feel like I could actually rest because he was here.
Because his breathing was next to mine.
Because some ridiculous part of me already can’t imagine sleeping without him anymore. It’s absurd, how quickly he’s become the only place my brain feels safe.
I wish I could say the same for him.
Somewhere in the middle of the night, I wake to the sound of his breathing—heavy, uneven, almost panicked. Still dazed, I blink my eyes open and see him twisting under the sheets, caught in something he clearly can’t outrun. He must be having a nightmare.
“Let me go …” he chokes out, the words trembling. His face is scrunched in fear, fighting off shadows only he can see.
“Adam?” I breathe quietly. I don’t know if I should wake him or not.
“Please,” he wails, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I’ll be a good boy … Please, Mom …”
Something sinks heavy in my chest. He’s slipping somewhere I can’t follow, and somehow, that only drags me closer.
His whole body trembles, desperate.
I always knew there was something caged behind his eyes, something he never let me touch. But this … this is no nightmare. This is more like a memory clawing its way out of him, and I hate that it’s something he showed only in his sleep and not to me.
“Hey.” I run my fingers through his hair. “It’s just a nightmare,” I breathe against his ear.
But he flinches at my touch.
“Please, stop hurting me!” he cries out, voice cracking on pure terror. He’s still asleep, trapped, shaking so hard the bed shudders with him.
My pulse spikes. Something’s wrong.
“Adam.” I raise my voice and shove his shoulder harder than before. He has to wake up. I need him to wake up.
His face twists into something venomous and terrified all at once.
“I wish you would just die,” he spits.
If there’s one thing anyone should know about me, it’s that I’m reckless, and I don’t take no for an answer.
I climb onto my knees and shake him harder. “Adam!”
His eyes snap open, wild and unfocused.
“Get your fucking hands off me!” he roars, exploding upward.
The force of his shove knocks me off the bed, the breath jolting from my chest.
Before I can even realize what’s happening, he’s already stumbled off the mattress, looming over me. But he isn’t here. He’s somewhere else entirely.
His hands close around my throat, and he yanks me upward as if I’m part of the nightmare he’s still trapped in.
“Just die already!” he shouts, voice cracking, eyes not even seeing me.
“Adam … it’s me …” I choke out, his grip painfully tight on my throat, so much that the air can’t reach my lungs anymore. My fingers dig into his wrists, trying to pry him off. “It’s—Adam, it’s Isabella …”
He looks back into my eyes, his expression vacant and lost, as if he can’t tell reality from a dream. His breathing is shallow and uneven, but his fingers loosen on my throat.
“Isabella?” he gasps.
“You’re safe,” I cough.
“Oh my God,” he pants, kneeling on the floor.
He reaches for me with trembling hands, pulling me into his arms. He smooths my hair back, guiding my face into the hollow of his shoulder.
“What have I done?” he breathes, horrified. “Please—please tell me you’re okay, babe.”
“I’m okay.” I nod against him, even though my pulse is still hammering.
“I’m so—I’m so sorry,” he says through broken breaths, lacing my face with quick kisses. “I’m so terribly s-sorry.”
“I’m fine,” I answer quietly as I push myself up. “What happened?”
He doesn’t speak.
He watches me instead, lips unsteady, eyes wet, his body tense as he tries to hold himself together.
“Please, talk to me.”
He dives into my arms like a frightened animal and rests his head against my belly.
“I can’t lose you, Isabella …”
“You won’t lose me.” I run my fingers though his hair.
His grip on my waist tightens as he buries his face deeper into my embrace. “I won’t let you go. I will make you love me, I swear to you,” he sobs lightly. “No matter how much it takes, I can make you love me.”
I knew he wasn’t the person he kept pretending to be.
Under everything he shows, there’s someone shattered, someone who never got the chance to feel safe.
A man carrying wounds he never asked for, fear he never outran, damage no one ever helped him name. Terrified, shaped by everything that’s hurt him. He just wants to be loved.
“It’s not hard for someone to love you,” I say, keeping him close.
I say the words that live in my bones, forged by what I survived, not what I was taught.
I say the words no one gave me when I was young, when absence still passed for love and silence still felt like protection.
I say the words I saw crouched inside his plea; the confession buried beneath his need to be wanted.
If he only knew how broken I feel inside, how I bear the same kind of brokenness he carries but hides worse than I do. If he understood how violently everything shifted in me the second he came back, picking me over every sick warning, every disgusting action he chose to overlook.
“What?” he asks me with wide eyes.
“It’s not hard for someone to love you,” I repeat.
“I don’t need anyone’s love or approval.” He holds my face, pressing his forehead against mine. “I need you. Only you.”
“Adam …”
“Isabella,” he cuts me off. “I’ll make you love me. Even if you push me away, I’ll come back to you, broken. I’ll come back crawling. I’d come back every time. Every—” He pulls back, his eyes burning into mine. His chest rises too fast.
“Drag me through hell if you want. Burn every part of me that wasn’t made for you,” he whispers. “I’d let you do it again. And again. As many times as it takes. Until there’s nothing left of me but the parts that belong to you.”
My heart races.
I knew I was fucked the second I saw him. I never believed in that cliché instant-love bullshit. That always felt fake, like something people said after the damage was already done. But with him, something shifted. Quietly, yet violently.
I was too afraid to confess it out loud, even admit it to myself.
Even when I thought he was a monster I should stay away from, I still couldn’t. Maybe because I recognize something familiar in him.
But the problem is, I didn’t feel scared. I already knew the cost, yet I kept reaching anyway.
My hands slide up to his jaw. “I’m yours, Adam. I think I’ve been yours for a long time.”
His lips capture mine in a passionate kiss, and I reciprocate with equal fervor.
I never thought a man like him—strong, fearless, reckless—could carry that kind of vulnerability inside.
And I never thought he would drag the same out of me.
To make me feel exposed and unstable, but also bold enough to stand with him, to match him and not back down.
He makes me feel breakable and unbreakable at the same time, and it scares the hell out of me.