Chapter 13 Chantel #2
"I can't be your partner in this," I choke out, wrapping my arms around myself. "I can't... I can't give you anything close to what you just gave me. I don't have money, or property, or anything valuable. I'm just... I'm just me, Faugh. And that's not enough."
The silence that follows is absolutely deafening, the kind of quiet that has weight and presence, pressing down against my eardrums until I can hear the frantic rhythm of my own heartbeat thundering .
It stretches between us like something tangible, a barrier made of all the things neither of us knows how to say, filled with the ghost of everything I just spilled out in that raw, ugly confession.
My words hang in the air like a stain that won't wash out, and I can feel Faugh's gaze burning into me, steady, unwavering, utterly terrifying in its intensity.
Faugh stares at me with an intensity that steals the oxygen from the room, his amber eyes burning with an emotion I can't quite name, something fierce and possessive and almost wounded, a raw vulnerability flickering beneath the surface of his controlled exterior.
His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly, the muscles working beneath his slate-green skin as he processes my words, and for a moment, he looks less like the immovable mountain of a man I've come to know and more like something fractured, something I've managed to crack despite his seemingly impenetrable composure.
His gaze pins me in place, and I can feel the conflict radiating off him in waves, the battle between whatever he's feeling and the careful restraint he's always maintained around me, the control that now seems to be slipping through his fingers like water.
"You think you are not enough," he says slowly.
"I know I'm not!" I snap back, my voice breaking.
"Look at us, Faugh! Look at what you just did! You bought a building! I’m almost too poor to afford paint supplies!
How is that supposed to work? How am I supposed to, to be with someone who can just throw money around like that when I'm drowning in debt and failure? "
"You are not a failure," he growls, and the sheer intensity of it makes me flinch. "You are brilliant. You are talented. You create beauty from nothing. Your art has worth far beyond what small-minded critics and exploitative galleries recognize."
"But it doesn't pay the bills!" I shout, and I'm full-on crying now, tears streaming down my face, my chest heaving with broken sobs.
"It doesn't buy buildings or gold or, or anything that matters in the real world!
I'm a financial disaster, Faugh! I'm a mess!
And you're perfect, and organized, and you have your life together, and I can't be the reason you throw everything away! "
I can see it on his face, the moment my words hit him, the way his expression shifts from fierce determination to something rawer, something almost devastated.
"Chantel," he starts, his deep voice cracking with something I've never heard before with a note of genuine desperation.
He reaches for me, his massive hand extending across the space between us, and I can see the barely restrained urgency in the movement, the way his fingers flex as though reaching for something slipping away.
I stumble backward, nearly tripping over my own feet, shaking my head so frantically that the stray curls escape my claw clip entirely.
The rational part of my brain is screaming that I need to stop, that running is only going to make this worse, but the panic is too loud, the overwhelming sense of drowning too consuming to ignore.
"I need to go," I gasp out, my voice small and broken.
"I need to think. I can't do this right now.
I can't be here, I can't look at you, I can't..." The words tumble out in a breathless rush, each one punctuated by a shaky inhale.
"I just need space. I need air. I need to figure out how to feel about any of this before I say something else that shatters what's left of us. "
"Do not leave," he says, and it's not a command, it's a plea, rough and desperate in a way I've never heard from him before. "Please. We can discuss this. I will explain—"
But I'm already grabbing my jacket from the hook by the door, shoving my arms through the sleeves with shaking hands. I can't breathe in here. The walls are closing in, his sacrifice pressing down crushing me.
"I'm sorry," I whisper, not looking at him because I know if I meet his eyes I'll break completely. "I just... I need space. I need to clear my head."
I yank open the door and run.
Lexi's apartment is across town, a cramped studio in a slightly better neighborhood that she shares with her girlfriend and approximately forty houseplants.
I show up on her doorstep at nine-thirty at night, soaking wet from the rain that started halfway through my frantic subway ride, mascara streaking down my face, and barely coherent.
She takes one look at me, at my rain-soaked hair plastered to my face, my mascara-smudged cheeks, my jacket dripping puddles onto her doormat, my entire frame trembling with barely contained panic, and without uttering a single word, she simply reaches out and pulls me inside, kicking the door shut behind me with the decisive finality of someone who knows exactly what I need and isn't about to let me stand in the hallway looking like a drowned, heartbroken mess.
Twenty minutes later, I'm curled up on her threadbare couch wrapped in a fuzzy blanket that smells like lavender detergent, clutching a mug of chamomile tea in both hands while Lexi sits cross-legged on the floor in front of me, her dark eyes concerned.
"Okay," she says gently, settling back against the worn fabric of her couch with the patient, unhurried demeanor of someone who has known me long enough to understand that whatever has brought me to her door at this hour, soaking and shattered, is going to require time and careful listening.
"Start from the beginning. Walk me through it.
What happened? And don't leave anything out, I need the whole story. "
So I tell her. Everything. The eviction notice, Faugh disappearing for the day, him coming back bruised and furious with a deed to the entire building. The dowry gold. The sheer, overwhelming, impossible scale of what he just sacrificed for me.
By the time I finish recounting every devastating detail, the rejection, the panic, the overwhelming realization of what Faugh has done, I'm crying again, my voice raw and broken, the words tumbling out in a fractured mess of gasps and sobs.
My hands are shaking so badly that the chamomile tea sloshes dangerously close to the rim of the mug, and I have to set it down on the coffee table before I spill it all over Lexi's already threadbare couch.
My throat feels like it's been scraped raw, every syllable scraping out like gravel, and it’s difficult to see Lexi through the blur of tears that won't stop coming.
"He bought a building," I sob into my tea. "Lexi, he bought an entire building. With his family's gold. And I can't even afford to replace the broken leg on the coffee table. How am I supposed to—"
"Okay, hold up," Lexi interrupts, holding up one hand.
"Let me make sure I have this straight. Your incredibly hot, incredibly devoted Orc roommate, who is clearly head-over-heels obsessed with you, just used his own money to buy your apartment building so you wouldn't lose your home.
And you're upset about this because... why exactly? "
"Because it's too much! Because I can't reciprocate! Because—"
"Chantel, babe, I say this with love, but you're being an idiot," Lexi says bluntly. "This isn't about money. This is about him protecting what he loves. And what he loves is you."
"But I can't give him anything in return," I protest weakly, my voice cracking with my own inadequacy.
"I'm broke, Lexi. I'm a complete and utter mess.
Keeping my own life together is hard, let alone contribute to his in any meaningful way.
I—" I gesture helplessly at myself, at my paint-stained sweater, at the accumulated chaos of my existence.
"What could I possibly offer someone like him?
Someone with resources and stability and an actual plan for his future? "
"You're giving him everything he actually wants," Lexi counters.
"A home. A partner. Someone who sees him as more than just muscle or money or whatever his clan wanted him to be.
Chantel, the guy cleans your apartment for fun.
He researched color theory to defend your art.
He literally fought people to protect your living situation.
Does that sound like someone who cares about financial equity? "
I open my mouth to argue, then close it again, her words sinking in.
"He doesn't want you to match his bank account," Lexi continues, her voice softening.
"He wants you. The messy, paint-covered, ramen-eating, brilliant artist you.
And yeah, maybe he has money and you don't, but so what?
You have things he doesn't have. You have creativity and passion and the ability to make him feel like he belongs somewhere. That's worth more than gold, Chantel."
My throat tightens, fresh tears spilling over as my own insecurity threatens to crush me entirely. "But what if I mess this up? What if I'm not—"
The front door shudders violently in its frame, the sudden impact so forceful that both Lexi and I jump, our bodies jerking in synchronized alarm.
A massive fist pounds against the wood with deliberate, measured force, three heavy strikes that echo through the small apartment like distant thunder rolling across an open sky. The sound is so loud, so physically present, that it seems to vibrate through my bones.
"Chantel." Faugh's voice, low and absolutely commanding, cuts through the door with the precision of a blade. There's something different in his tone, something that makes my stomach flip and my skin prickle with electricity. "Open the door."
Lexi's eyes go impossibly wide, her entire face registering shock. "Holy shit," she breathes out, her voice barely audible. "Is that him? Is that actually—"
I nod mutely, unable to form words, my heart launching into my throat with such force I'm certain Lexi can hear it. My palms have gone clammy, and I can feel the nervous energy coiling through my entire body like a live wire.
Another knock reverberates through the apartment, harder than the first volley, with enough force that the doorframe actually groans and creaks in protest under the sheer weight behind it. A thin shower of dust particles drifts down from where the frame meets the wall.
"Chantel," he repeats, and there's something raw in his voice now, something desperate beneath the command. "I can smell you. I know you are in there. Open this door before I remove it from its hinges."
"He can smell you?" Lexi hisses, looking somewhere between alarmed and impressed. "That's either incredibly romantic or incredibly terrifying."
"Both," I whisper, setting down my mug with shaking hands. "It's definitely both."