Chapter 42
DAMIEN
Idon’t recognise her anymore. That is the rot at the centre of my chest, the cold realisation that the woman I’ve been guarding is gone, replaced by something I can’t map.
She laughs while I’m still deciding which locks to change, which exits to seal, which routines to fracture so nothing unpredictable can slip through again.
The sound cuts through the heavy, suffocating silence of the house like glass breaking—bright, wrong, fearless. It isn’t hysterical. It isn’t the sound of a mind that has finally cracked under the pressure. It sounds free. I hate that word; it tastes like iron and betrayal.
“You think this is funny?” I ask, my voice a jagged rasp in the quiet of the hallway.
She’s perched on the arm of the sofa like she’s waiting for a show to begin, one ankle crossed over the other with a feline grace.
Her hair still smells faintly of the biting cold air and the stale, damp concrete of that building—the place I want to burn to the ground until only ash remains.
Her eyes flick to the door behind me—then back to my face with a devastating lack of concern.
“You’re adorable when you spiral,” she says, her tone conversational, almost light. “Very intense. Very… dramatic.”
I turn to the door, my movements mechanical and driven by a frantic need for order.
I slam the door lock. Click. Another. Click.
The mechanical snaps echo through the house, sounding like the closing of a tomb.
She watches me do it, her smile widening with each sound, as if I’m performing a trick for her amusement.
“You can’t just leave,” I say, the air in the room feeling thin. “You don’t get to decide everything unilaterally.”
She hops down from the sofa, strolling closer with a slow, deliberate cadence. She stops just out of reach, tilting her head like a predator assessing a new type of prey. “I already did.”
Something in my chest tears—a structural failure I can’t hide.
I move fast—too fast—crowding her space, forcing her back against the wall to make these walls remember who controls this house.
“You think standing in that room gave you power?” I snarl, the scent of her skin filling my head, making my vision blur.
“You think because you didn’t sit you won something? ”
She leans in until her mouth is so close to my ear I can feel the heat of her breath. “I didn’t win,” she whispers. “I stopped playing.”
She laughs again, soft and delighted, like she’s just remembered a private joke I’m not clever enough to understand. My hands curl into fists at my sides, the skin of my knuckles stretched white. I don’t touch her. I won’t give her that. I won’t admit how much she’s affecting me.
“I can keep you safe,” I say, the words sounding desperate even to me. “I can lock this down. I can make sure he never—”
She pulls back, her eyes bright and dangerous.
“Oh, sweetheart. You’re still trying to be the hero.
” Her fingers trail over my chest, light, taunting, a caress that feels like a burn.
She taps my sternum once, right over the frantic beat of my heart.
“This is the part where you think cages are love.”
I snap.
The restraint I’ve built my life on shatters. I grab her wrist—not hard, not gentle—just enough to remind her I’m real, that consequences still exist in the world I’ve built for her. “You’re not leaving,” I say, the words low and final. “Not tonight. Not like this.”
She doesn’t fight me. She doesn’t plead. She looks down at my hand on her wrist, then back up at my face and grins. “Do it,” she says. “Lock me up.”
The words hollow me out. I drag her down the hall, past rooms that used to feel neutral and now feel like weapons, like tactical positions in a war I didn’t know we were fighting.
She walks easily beside me, humming under her breath like this is a game she already solved three moves ahead of me.
When I open the door to the spare room, she whistles.
“Wow,” she says, scanning the sparse furniture. “You redecorated?”
I shove her inside. The door shuts with a heavy thud. The lock slides home. Click.
I stand there in the hallway, breathing hard, my heart hammering against my ribs. I wait for the scream. I wait for the panic, the begging that proves I still matter, that she still needs me to be her gravity. None of it comes. Instead, her voice drifts through the wood, calm and amused.
“You know what the funny part is?” she says. “You think this is about him.”
I press my forehead to the cool wood. “Shut up.”
She laughs again. God, she laughs. “It’s not,” she continues. “It’s about you realising you don’t get to be the centre of my gravity anymore.”
Something fractures behind my eyes. “I saved you,” I say, the words sounding like a plea. “I kept you alive.”
“You did,” she agrees. “And I’m grateful.”
Silence drops between us, heavy and expectant. Then—soft, lethal—“But I don’t belong to gratitude.”
I slam my fist into the wall beside the door. The sound echoes through the empty hallway, ugly and raw. “You don’t care,” I say, the rage bubbling up. “After everything—”
“Oh, I care,” she replies. “Just not about being owned.”
I hear her footsteps approach the other side of the door.
Her shadow slides beneath it, a thin dark line on the carpet.
“You can lock every door in this house,” she says lightly.
“You can chain the windows. You can sit outside all night pretending you’re protecting me.
” She taps the door once, exactly where my knuckles still ache. “But you already lost.”
My breath stutters.
“Because,” she adds, the smile audible in her voice, “I walked into a place that taught me how to disappear—and walked out without you.”
The words rip something open I can’t close.
I slide down the door until I’m sitting on the floor, back against the wood that separates us, my hands shaking and my mind racing in tight, violent circles.
Inside the room, she hums again. Cheerful.
Unbothered. Free. And for the first time since I met her, I understand the truth I’ve been refusing to see.
I didn’t lock her in to keep her safe. I locked her in because I’m terrified of what happens if she doesn’t need me to survive anymore.
The humming stops.
That’s what finally breaks me. I don’t realise how much I was clinging to that sound—her careless little tune, her proof of indifference—until it cuts off so cleanly it feels deliberate.
Silence snaps tight around my skull. The kind that presses.
The kind that demands something from you.
I get to my feet, slowly, my hands shaking now.
Not with fear. With rage so sharp it feels surgical.
Precise. Like every thought in my head has narrowed down to one brutal certainty.
She thinks she’s won.
I unlock the door. The click is loud in the quiet hallway.
Final. Unavoidable. I don’t open it yet.
I rest my palm flat against the wood, breathing through my nose, counting—not to calm down, but to make sure I don’t tear the hinges off and prove her right about me being nothing but impulse and teeth.
“You done performing?” I ask.
On the other side, her voice is soft. Curious. Unafraid. “Took you long enough.”
That does it. I open the door. She’s standing in the middle of the room, not backed into a corner like she should be, not defensive, not waiting for permission.
Her posture is loose, almost lazy, like she’s been expecting me.
Like she arranged herself this way on purpose.
Her eyes flick over me. Slow. Assessing.
That smile curves again—not sweet, not taunting—knowing.
“You look wrecked,” she says. “Is this the part where you pretend I made you do this?”
I cross the room in three steps. I don’t grab her.
I don’t have to. The air shifts when I stop in front of her, close enough that she has to tilt her head back to meet my eyes.
Close enough that she can feel how tightly I’m holding myself together.
“You don’t get to provoke me and then pretend you’re not affected by the outcome,” I say.
She lifts her chin. “Who said I wasn’t affected?”
That’s the crack. I see it then—not fear, not submission—excitement. Bright and sharp and utterly unforgivable. She wants this collision. Wants to feel me lose control while she stays untouched by it. I cup her jaw. Firm. Claiming. Her breath stutters. There it is.
“Don’t confuse my restraint for mercy,” I murmur. “I am still very capable of ruining you.”
Her lips part in a smile that shouldn’t exist. “Then do it,” she whispers. “Or admit you’re scared I won’t break the way you need me to.”
My vision goes red. I crowd her back until she hits the wall—not slammed, not hurt—pinned.
The power shift snaps into place like muscle memory.
Her pulse jumps under my thumb. I feel it.
She feels me feel it. “You think you’re free,” I say lowly.
“You think because you stood in that room you rewrote the rules.”
She exhales, slow and deliberate, eyes never leaving mine. “No,” she says. “I rewrote you.”
That’s when I kiss her. Not soft. Not tender.
Not asking. It’s anger and want and possession crashing into her mouth all at once—a kiss meant to shut her up, to remind her what gravity feels like when it drags instead of invites.
She gasps, fingers curling into my shirt like she expected this and prepared for it.
That makes me furious all over again. I pull back just enough to look at her. She’s smiling. Breathing hard. Alive.
“You still think locking doors makes you dangerous?” she asks quietly. “Because right now you’re just loud.”
I press my forehead to hers, teeth clenched. “You don’t get to mock the man who would burn the world for you.”
She laughs under her breath. “I don’t need a world burned,” she says. “I need you honest.”