19 - Isa #3
"Excuse me," I manage, the words scraping out barely audible.
I turn and walk away. Not running, not quite, but close enough that heads turn. Through the ballroom, past the shocked whispers, out the French doors to The Setai's oceanside terrace.
The ocean air hits cold against my burning face.
Salt spray catches in my throat, mixing with the phantom taste of copper that always comes when I think of that day.
The ocean sounds like Meiling's laughter if I don't listen too carefully.
I grip the railing, knuckles white, trying to remember how lungs work.
Below, waves crash against sand in the darkness.
Adrian's behind me before I hear him approach. His hands cover mine on the railing, solid and warm.
"Isa."
That's all he says. Just my name. But it cracks something in me that's been locked.
I try my counting. One two three four five six seven eight.
Meiling and I used to count in Japanese — she was obsessed with some anime that year and made us both learn the numbers off her subtitles — and we never made it to nine.
Then we gave up even trying and just counted in English, another little inside joke.
One two three four five six seven eight.
The mechanism that's saved me a thousand times.
But the numbers scatter, refuse to hold formation.
For the first time, my most reliable defense fails me.
I straighten my spine, rebuild the walls brick by brick. I am The Blade. I've served drinks to killers without flinching. I can handle two grieving parents and their justified anger.
Except I can't. The walls crumble faster than I can build them.
The breakdown comes sudden and complete.
Rare for someone who's built herself on control.
Not tears, I don't cry, but something worse.
My whole body shakes, control shattering like I've been holding it together with violence alone and suddenly there's nothing left to grip.
This kind of breakdown is rare for me, hasn't happened since the day Meiling died. My knees threaten to buckle.
Adrian turns me toward him, pulls me against his chest. I let him, too undone to resist comfort I don't deserve. His arms circle me, one hand in my hair, the other pressed between my shoulder blades.
"Those people," he says quietly, carefully. "They hurt you."
I can't answer. Can't explain that they're the parents of the girl who might have died because of me. That every accusation they threw was gentle compared to what I throw at myself. That seeing them aged by grief I might have caused is worse than any knife wound.
He doesn't push, just holds me through this rare breakdown while I shake apart.
His embrace feels like damnation. The arms of a man who would burn down Miami to keep me safe, who has killed for less than the tears I'm not crying.
But even in his arms, even surrounded by his warmth and the familiar scent of him, the past rises stronger.
That day floods back. Sun on skin, laughter turning to screams, blood spreading across stone, the knife on the ground.
The memories I've kept fragmented for so long suddenly feel sharp enough to cut.
His arms can't hold this back. Can't stop the way that day is suddenly more real than the terrace, than the gala, than anything except the weight of what I might have done. This breakdown, so rare for someone who never loses control, won't stop.
"Breathe," Adrian murmurs against my hair. "Just breathe, mi amor."
I try, but the air becomes memory. The quarry in summer. Copper and dust and the heavy silence after someone stops screaming.
His hand rubs circles on my back, the gesture meant to soothe.
It doesn't. Can't. The comfort feels insufficient against the magnitude of what's crashing through me.
Those were Meiling's parents in there. Real.
Alive. Asking questions about my life with suspicious eyes because they can see what I've tried to hide. That I don't deserve any of this.
They're right to suspect me. Right to wonder how someone like me ended up here.
The answer they'll never know is standing here holding me.
Adrian, who built this life for me piece by piece without my knowledge.
The dress, the job, the apartment, all of it his work that I'm only beginning to discover.
But they see the result. The impossible elevation. The girl from nowhere wrapped in silk and influence.
"Who were those people?" Adrian asks, though I have the sense he already knows, the way he knows everything.
"People I knew a long time ago."
He nods slowly, piecing something together, that sharp mind working even as he holds me.
Adrian's arms tighten around me. Even through my breakdown, I feel his possession in the grip.
Not comfort but claiming, like he's holding me together through sheer will and ownership.
Part of me wants to fight it. The larger part needs exactly this.
Someone strong enough to contain what's spilling out of me.