Chapter 19
Vienna
Now
By the time I made it back to the trees, I already knew I shouldn’t have come.
Not because I didn’t want to be there. Not because every part of me hadn’t been dragging me back to her from the second I’d left the bar, from the second I’d walked away from Dante and Rachel and Trex and the ghosts of old grief still clinging to my skin.
But because I knew, even before I caught sight of the house through the dark, that I wasn’t coming here for the same reason I always did.
This wasn’t old habits or stupid rituals. And it sure as fuck wouldn’t be enough tonight to obey and stand in the shadows, waiting and watching for proof of life.
The memory of the previous night still sat raw and open somewhere beneath my ribs, refusing to scab over no matter how many times I told myself to leave it alone.
Her hand against the glass.
Her forehead pressed softly over mine.
The way she had looked at me like I was something she still felt, something she still wanted, before stepping back and shutting me out all over again.
I had spent the better part of the day trying not to think about it, burying myself in noise and club business and old grief that had no business clawing its way back to the surface after all these years.
But now, with the house looming in front of me and the balcony just visible through the dark, all roads led back to the same place.
Gabriella.
Always Gabriella.
And tonight, more than ever, I was done pretending I could keep my distance.
The grass was damp beneath my boots as I crossed the stretch between the trees and the house, moving low and quiet out of instinct more than caution.
It would have been smarter to stay back, to keep to the shadows like I always had, but there was something too sharp inside me tonight, something restless and ugly and far too close to panic to let me stand still and simply watch.
Every step I took felt wrong and reckless, and yet entirely inevitable, as though I had been walking toward this moment for far longer than I cared to admit.
Her curtains were still open.
That alone made something in my chest tighten, because she had closed them on me the night before. She had looked me in the eye, touched me through the glass, and then cut me off with her own shaking hands as though she had no choice but to put the barrier back in place.
I had replayed that moment so many times in my head since then that I no longer knew which version of it was real—the one where she was rejecting me, or the one where she had looked close to breaking when she did it.
And after everything I had learnt… after hearing about the bruises, about her mother, about the way she had been kept close and hidden away at the rally like something fragile or valuable or dangerous to lose… I no longer trusted the version of events I had spent years trying to live with.
She had told me she loved him.
She had fought me to go back to him.
She had made her choice.
That was the lie I had been swallowing for so long it had started to taste like truth.
But now?
Now I couldn’t stop hearing Rachel’s voice in my head, soft and certain and quietly devastating.
That doesn’t sound like a happy woman. That sounds like a trapped woman.
And I hated that it had taken me this long to let the possibility in.
I reached the wall beneath her balcony and paused for only a second before hauling myself up, my palms catching rough brick as muscle memory and frustration did the rest. It wasn’t the first time I had climbed up there, but it was the first time I had done it with this much intent, this much fury simmering low beneath my skin.
By the time I pulled myself over the railing and landed softly on the narrow balcony, my heart was beating hard enough to make my pulse feel thick in my throat.
And there she was.
She had heard me before I even fully straightened, her body already still in the middle of the room, her eyes wide and fixed on me like I had materialised from the dark rather than climbed out of it.
For a second, neither of us moved.
She looked beautiful in that cruel, painful way she always had. Barefoot. Pale. Wrapped in one of those soft-looking nightshirts that did nothing to hide how fragile she seemed beneath it.
Her hair fell loose around her shoulders, and even from where I stood, I could see the tension in the line of her body, the way she held herself too carefully, too stiffly, like pain had become something she wore so often she no longer noticed the weight of it.
And Christ, that alone nearly did me in.
Because all I could think was that she didn’t look like a woman who was happy.
She looked like a woman surviving.
My hand lifted before I consciously thought to move, my palm flattening against the glass between us, and her gaze dropped to it instantly before flicking back to my face.
“Open the door,” I said, the words rougher than I had intended, quieter too, because even now some part of me knew better than to make noise out here.
Her expression shifted immediately.
Not cold or angry. Worse… She looked afraid. And that made my stomach drop. I didn’t want her to fear me. Or to have anything to fear.
She shook her head once, a slow, small movement that would have been easy to miss for someone who wasn’t as obsessed as I was. But I saw it, and I felt something burst inside me, flaring beneath my ribs, igniting an anger that was impossible to ignore.
“Gabriella,” I said again, trying to keep my voice level, trying not to let the anger or the fear or the days of spiralling doubt bleed too heavily into the sound of her name, but failing anyway. “Open the fucking door.”
Her lips parted like she meant to say something, but no sound came out. Instead, she just shook her head again, more urgently this time, her eyes darting past me for the briefest second before snapping back.
That look did something to me, because I knew what that look meant now. I was seeing past my own hurt, past the indifference she was pretending to adopt, and I saw it, really saw it.
It was fear.
And suddenly I was no longer looking at a woman choosing distance. I was looking at someone trying to stop me from doing something stupid.
My hand dropped from the glass to the handle before I had fully thought it through, my fingers wrapping around the metal knob and twisting hard.
Nothing.
The door didn’t budge.
I tried again, harder this time, a surge of disbelief and something far darker rising up through me so quickly it made my vision blur for half a second.
Locked.
The fucking thing was locked.
My eyes snapped back to hers, and whatever she saw on my face must have frightened her, because she took an involuntary step forward before catching herself, her hands lifting uselessly in front of her as though she didn’t know whether to reach for me or push me away.
All at once, every little thing I had been trying not to make too much of came crashing together with enough force to leave me reeling.
The rally. The bruises. Her mother. The way she had looked at me through the glass.
The way she had touched me and then retreated, like she was tearing herself in half to do it.
The way she was standing there now, pale and tense and terrified, with a locked door between her and the outside world.
A fucking balcony.
A room with a view.
Pretty curtains. Soft lights. A nice fucking cage.
“Why is it locked?” I demanded, the words coming out harsher than I meant them to, but there was no room left in me for softness now, not when every instinct I had was screaming.
Her eyes widened further, and she shook her head again, more violently now, mouthing something I couldn’t hear through the glass.
I didn’t need to hear it.
I knew exactly what she was trying to say.
Stop. Go. Leave.
But all I could think was, why?
Why the fuck was she trying so hard to keep me out?
Why was she still doing this?
My palm hit the glass harder this time, the sound echoing into the night.
“Why won’t you let me in?” I hissed, my voice low and furious, my breath fogging the pane between us. “Why the fuck don’t you trust me?”
Her face crumpled for a split second before she forced it still again, and that nearly undid me more than anything else had.
She looked hurt. And that didn’t make sense. She’d pushed me away!
None of it made any fucking sense.
“You trusted me once,” I said, the words leaving me before I could stop them, raw and jagged and pulled straight from somewhere old enough to bleed. “You used to come to me when things went wrong. You used to let me save you, so why not now? Why not now, Gabby?”
Tears sprang into her eyes so quickly it felt like being punched.
And just like that, I was sixteen again.
Sixteen and furious and terrified and finding her where she should never have been, her mascara smudged and her hands shaking and her eyes going soft with relief the second she saw me.
The memory hit so hard it almost made me stagger.
And before I could stop myself, before reason or caution or common fucking sense could catch up, my fist slammed against the glass.
Once.
Twice.
Hard enough to sting.
“Talk to me!” I snapped, the desperation in my voice far uglier than the anger. “For once in your life, stop pushing me away and just—”
She startled violently, looking over her shoulder so fast it made my pulse spike, and then she turned back to me with something so close to panic on her face that it cut straight through every other emotion in me like a knife.
That was the moment.
That was the exact moment something inside me shifted for good.
Because that wasn’t the face of a woman trying to reject me.
That was the face of a woman trying to keep me alive.
My chest heaved as I stared at her, every thought in my head colliding too fast and too violently to make sense of any of them.
“Gabriella…” I said again, but this time it came out quieter, rougher, stripped of all the fury that had been driving me seconds before. “What the fuck is he doing to you?”
Her whole body went still.
Still in that way prey animals went still when they knew movement might get them killed.
And Christ, the sight of it made something murderous uncurl inside me.
Because I knew then.
Enough to know that I had been wrong.
Enough to know that I had let myself believe the easiest version of the truth because the real one would have destroyed me.
Enough to know that every time she had sent me away, she had likely been trying to save me from something I had been too stubborn or too blind or too fucking hurt to see.
And suddenly I couldn’t breathe.
She lifted one trembling hand and pressed her fingertips to the glass again, right over the place where my fist had hit moments before, and for one stupid, broken heartbeat, I nearly did the same.
But then she mouthed it.
Go.
A fresh wave of anger surged through me, so hot and immediate it made my teeth clench.
Not at her. I was never really angry with her—I was angry at all of it. The years of lies. The years of separation. At every person who had played a hand in making us end up where we were now.
At the way she was standing there in front of me, looking like she wanted me and feared for me in equal measure, and still asking me to leave like she was something I could survive losing.
My hand flexed uselessly at my side.
“No,” I said, though I kept my voice low now, because I understood the fear in her eyes in a way I hadn’t five minutes ago. “No, I’m not doing this again. I’m not standing on the outside while you let me believe this is what you want.”
Her eyes squeezed shut for half a second, and when they opened again, there was something pleading in them that I didn’t know how to bear.
Somewhere along the way, she had stopped believing I could carry this with her.
That she had to carry it alone.
The thought landed so hard it made me feel suddenly hollow.
“You used to trust me,” I said again, quieter this time, not accusing anymore, just broken around the edges by the truth of it. “So why won’t you now?”
She shook her head slowly, tears slipping free at last, and even though I couldn’t hear her, I understood her answer all the same.
Because this wasn’t about trust.
This was about fear.
And that was so much worse.
I stared at her for one last second, my chest tight enough to ache, my thoughts already spiralling somewhere dark and dangerous and entirely past the point of reason, and then I stepped back from the door because if I stayed there a second longer, I was going to do something reckless enough to get us both killed.
Her face crumpled fully then, and she pressed her palm flat to the glass as though she wanted to stop me leaving, even as every instinct in her body had begged me to do exactly that.
That nearly fucking killed me.
Because she did want me.
She did.
I could see it now in every trembling line of her body.
And somehow that made this worse.
I backed toward the balcony railing slowly, not taking my eyes off her, not trusting myself to turn away yet, because now that I had seen it—now that I had seen the fear and the locked door and the truth she wasn’t saying—I knew I would never be able to go back to pretending.
She had trusted me once.
She had reached for me once.
And if she couldn’t do it now, then I’d have to be the one to reach harder.
The thought followed me all the way down from the balcony and back into the shadows of the trees, where the cold night air did nothing to cool the rage simmering beneath my skin.
Because somewhere behind me, trapped in that room, was the girl who had once called me when things went wrong.
And all I could think, as I disappeared into the dark, was that there had been a time when she hadn’t hesitated to let me save her.
A time when she had looked for me.
A time when she had trusted me to come.