Chapter Fifty-Two
Rheda
My flat is quiet in the wrong way, like it’s been holding its breath waiting for me to come back. I close the door behind me and stand there longer than I should, keys still cold in my hand, staring at nothing.
I force myself into movement because standing still feels worse. Shoes off by the door. Jacket over the chair. Bag dropped onto the kitchen table. Small ordinary things, the kind that should make a place feel familiar, should remind me I belong here and not somewhere else entirely.
But the silence follows me from room to room. I turn lights on I don’t need just to break it, harsh yellow filling the kitchen, then the living room, but it only makes the flat feel more exposed.
I should be relieved to be away from him. Instead, all I can think about is going to sleep.
The thought makes my stomach turn because I know exactly what it means.
Another dream. Another chance. Another opportunity to drag something useful out of him that I can’t get in daylight. Something I can write down. Something that could stop Friday from becoming final.
It is humiliating how badly I want it.
I brace my hands against the kitchen counter and stare at the sink, trying to breathe through the tightness in my chest. My body feels ahead of me somehow, reacting to things my mind is still trying to deny.
There are flashes at the edge of thought that never fully become memory—pressure at my hips, heat at the back of my neck, the sick certainty of being watched so closely it starts to feel like touch.
I turn the tap on harder than necessary. Water crashes into the sink, loud and immediate, something normal, something that behaves the way it should.
I almost lost my job today. The thought should sober me. Six years of painful grinding to get an ounce of respect, almost gone within an hour.
And yet I find myself walking to the bedroom.
I barely bother undressing properly, just enough to get under the sheets, tired in that deep, ugly way that sits in the bones.
My body aches with it. My thighs still carry that dull soreness I can’t explain without thinking of things I can’t prove happened.
Sleep comes slowly, then all at once, heavy and inevitable. The world loosens around me. The mattress beneath me feels farther away. The room tilts, soft at the edges, and somewhere inside that blur, my pulse starts to climb. I know this feeling. I know what comes next.
And then—he is there.
Standing at the edge of the bed like he has always belonged there, like the room was built around the shape of him. Still. Watching. His presence fills the space so completely.
My breath catches hard enough to hurt. And with it, the anger returns.
“You don’t get to do that.” I manage, though my voice comes out thinner than I want, frayed at the edges. “You don’t get to lie like that and then just—”
The words die in my throat because I hear it. The accusation sounds too much like hurt, like I’ve been waiting for him instead of fearing him. Heat crawls up my neck.
I stop, disgusted with myself, with how exposed I’ve made the wound.
“You disappeared,” I say instead, forcing the words out before they can rot into something softer. I need them to sound like anger. I need them to sound like accusation instead of ache. “You left, and then you just—”
The sentence collapses under its own weight.
I drag in a breath. “You’re letting them kill you.”
He says nothing. He just watches me with that same unbearable stillness. He steps closer.
My body betrays me before my mind can catch it—a tightening low in my stomach, a shift in my breath, every nerve waking at once in a way that feels humiliating. Want sharpened into shame.
I hate it. I hate that he can do nothing at all and still make my body feel like it belongs to him.
His hand lifts and I track it slowly. Every inch of it. And still—I don’t push back. It settles against my jaw like it belongs there.
My breath stutters.
“You’re doing such a good job, Doctor.” The words sink deep.
“What does that mean?” I ask, but my voice has already shifted, softer than I intend, pulled into something I don’t recognise as mine.
His thumb moves slightly against my skin. “You’re starting to see it.”
My eyebrows furrow together. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Not yet.”
He leans in slowly. My lungs forget their rhythm. Every part of me goes painfully still.
His mouth touches mine so lightly I have nothing to fight. That is what ruins me. There is no force to resist, only the terrible softness of him assuming I will stay there. And I do.
My body locks around the feeling of it. Heat rises under my skin, sharp and humiliating, tangled so tightly with anger I can no longer separate one from the other.
The kiss lingers only for a moment, but it settles into me like something permanent. My mouth stays open after he pulls away, useless and warm, as if some obedient part of me is still waiting for him to come back. He watches me quietly, like he already knows exactly what that kiss has ruined.
I should pull away. I should use the space he’s given me and take back whatever small piece of control I still have left.
Instead, I reach for him.
The movement is small, barely there. My hand catches lightly at the front of his shirt, fingers curling into the fabric like I need something solid enough to blame for this.
I pull him down and kiss him again, harder this time. My mouth crashes into his like I can punish him for what he’s done to me by letting him do it again. And when I finally pull away, my thoughts are in pieces.
He looks at me for a moment, and then—small, quiet, devastating—he smiles.
My fingers tighten instinctively in his shirt, but they close on nothing. One second, he is there. The next, I am alone.
The room snaps back into place with a quiet violence that feels almost cruel. Shadows where they should be. Air that belongs to me again. Silence, heavy and complete.
I stare at the empty space where he stood, my pulse still stumbling like my body hasn’t realised he’s gone.
I press my fingers against my mouth like I can hold the evidence there, like I can stop it from becoming real. But I can’t.
Because somewhere beneath the shame, beneath the fear, beneath every rational part of me that should know better...I wanted him to kiss me again.
And worse—I don’t want him to stop.