Natalya
Kiara
Present
The bathwater laps against my cheeks as I slowly sink lower and lower, until I close my eyes and disappear beneath the surface. I let the heat keep me suspended there while my mind drifts.
Choosing me means losing everything else.
His voice from a month ago ricochets restlessly through my head.
For the past month, I felt like I lost everything. I felt like I lost him and myself all at once while I was kept prisoner.
And yet now, when I’m back, safe and sound, his words settle differently. Now they carry their full weight, making me falter, because now I understand what they truly mean.
I’ve spent a month learning exactly what comes with loving Kasien. The dark world woven into every part of his existence comes hand in hand with fear, violence, uncertainty, and danger lurking around every corner.
Do I really want this? Am I truly capable of treating the last month as nothing more than a terrible detour in our renewed relationship and simply moving forward? What will my life even look like now?
I’m running out of air.
His fingers are moving through the bathwater, absentmindedly playing with the strands of my hair floating on the surface. He hasn’t left my side for a single second since he found me.
I rise out of the water, only for his hand to find my face right away.
He’s been kneeling beside the bathtub the entire time, unable to take his eyes off me, guarding me like some sad, wounded dog.
Turning to the side, I look into his eyes and that’s all it takes. My vision blurs instantly.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, I do want this.
I want him.
I can’t move on with my life unless he’s in it. Not ever again. I’m afraid I’ll take whatever comes with him. Anything at all.
But the fear pushes a few drops of tears out of me anyway.
His brows furrow, worry swallowing every other emotion on his face.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks hesitantly, his fingers still skimming softly along my jaw.
I stretch one leg out of the tub and rest my foot on the faucet while I’m not sure how to answer him. I need to say out loud how fucking terrified I am. But what if he retreats? What if he decides what’s best for me before I get the chance to decide for myself?
Gathering what little energy I have left, I start with the thing that matters most.
“I need to call my mom. She must be so scared,” I whisper, my voice breaking on the last word as the reality of what she must’ve been going through catches up with me.
He swallows worriedly.
“I—” he starts, pulling his hand away from my face. “She’s okay,” he says simply.
I turn to him, confused.
“What?”
“I might have told her you went on a trip,” he admits, guilt settling heavily across his features. “From your phone,” he adds.
My eyes widen.
“Excuse me?” I whip out.
“I thought that’s what you would’ve wanted. For her to be okay.”
“But—”
“I did it right after I took you,” he explains.
“So I’m not officially missing?”
His lips press into a thin line before he shakes his head once in disagreement.
My mouth falls open.
“Well, that worked out, I guess,” I mumble angrily.
Given the fact that my mother calls me once every three months, she’s probably doing just fine.
“What about my job at the paper?” I ask, turning back to him.
“I think...” He trails off as though he’s afraid to say it out loud. “You’re probably fired at this point,” he admits apologetically.
I shoot him a deeply unimpressed look before sinking back beneath the surface, because I’m simply not capable of being properly angry with him while he’s right there, looking at me like that, with that scorching stare.
What was I even thinking?
That I’d just go back to my normal life? Back to work? Back to pretending everything was the same while dating a criminal who disappears for years at a time and somehow keeps coming back from the dead?
Choosing me means losing everything else.
The words echo inside my brain once more.
Right.
I lost my job.
But what else did I really have? The answer comes far too quickly.
Not much.
I don’t have a huge circle of friends. I don’t even have a best friend anymore.
I only have the kind of friends people call when they want a drink, a movie, or someone to fill an empty evening.
Lana and I drifted apart years ago because I buried myself in work, and somewhere along the way I stopped letting new people get close enough to matter.
No one besides my mom probably even noticed I was gone.
It’s been more than a month since Kasien kidnapped me. Maybe almost two months. I’m not even sure. And the only person he had to fake-notify was my mother.
That’s actually depressing.
Because the truth is that I really haven’t had anything since I lost him six years ago.
Nothing.
I emerge from the water again, brushing bubbles from my face.
He’s still there. Elbows braced against the rim, chin resting on his wrist while he obsessively tracks every movement I make, monitoring how long I stay beneath the surface as if I might dissolve the second he looks away.
“What is my life going to look like now?” I ask, feeling a sudden flare of frustration, but too exhausted to put any real force behind it.
His pupils wander on the tiles behind me before he exhales and reaches toward me, stroking my chin with rough, scarred fingers. I lean into the touch.
“However you want it to look,” he says quietly. “I’ll do everything I can to make it possible.”
Yeah. As if it were that simple.
“I was so—” My voice breaks the second the feeling hits me. “So scared that you were dead,” I manage.
“I’m sorry,” he croaks.
The words barely leave his mouth before his eyes fill with tears and one escapes straightaway, sliding down his cheek.
“I’m so sorry it took me so long to find you,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry for all of it.”
“If something like that ever happens again,” I begin, forcing my voice to remain steady, “if I ever have to believe you’re dead, I won’t survive it.”
His expression changes at once. The guilt remains, but something darker settles underneath it.
“Kiara—”
“Kasien, I can’t go through this again. I can’t,” I let it out heavily.
The fear in his eyes deepens into something that almost resembles dread.
“Are you leaving me?” he blurts out nervously.
I swallow before answering, because I don’t know.
I’m not. Or maybe I should. But I don’t want to. I open my mouth and no words come out.
His jaw locks and his hand tightens around my arm beneath the water.
“I gave you a choice,” he forces out. “I was begging you to choose the safer option.”
I stare at him, something still simmering beneath my skin, close to anger but more complicated than that.
“But now the choice is gone.” His voice lowers. “I can’t give you options anymore. You’re mine, and it stays that way. I’m never leaving you again. I can’t. I won’t leave your side for as long as I’m breathing, Kiara.”
I stay silent. His words roam through me like something alive.
“This entire month, while I couldn’t find you, all I could think about was that whatever was happening to you was my fault.
” His thumb brushes absentmindedly over my knuckles.
“Because it is. And the second I saw you, the moment I finally had you in my arms, I knew there was no version of my life where I could ever leave you alone. I became selfish. It’s done, Kiara.
I don’t want my life to mean anything beyond you anymore. ”
My stomach twists as if I’m standing at the edge of a cliff, staring down into something far too deep to see the bottom.
I’m so fucking torn and exhausted.
And he says it with such terrifying certainty that it steals the air from my lungs. Like there’s no doubt left in him at all. Like the time we were separated really changed something in him.
This is what I wished to hear for years. This is more than I ever imagined in my most messed up dreams.
Yet I’m not sure whether I want to kiss him or start crying more, so I do the only thing that makes sense and shove myself back under the water like a bewildered child who hopes hiding for a few seconds might somehow make reality easier to process.
He doesn’t let me stay there this time. His hands slide under my arms and he pulls me right back out.
Before I can protest, he’s already on his feet, lifting me out of the bathtub.
I instinctively grab onto his shoulders as he steadies me against him.
Water streams from my body and hair, dripping onto the floor and thoroughly ruining his clothes.
Not that he seems to notice.
He stares at me intently, his gaze flicking from one eye to the other as if he’s trying really hard to read what’s happening inside my head, desperately searching for something not even I can find.
Then he sits me on the bathroom counter and reaches for a towel. He wraps it around me carefully before cupping my face in both hands.
“You don’t have to think about it anymore,” he says calmly. “If you change your mind, I’ll beg you to change it back. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll hunt you down and kidnap you. I did it once and it worked surprisingly well. I can do it again if that’s what it takes.”
I stare at him through wet lashes, wrapped in the soft fabric.
“This is done, Kiara. You’re mine. Do you understand?”
Heat blooms beneath my skin where his hands are holding my face, and despite everything, despite the fear, exhaustion and confusion, the corners of my mouth begin to pull into a small smile.
The second he notices, relief washes across his features. He smiles back fondly, in the way that makes him look ungodly handsome.
His thumb ghosts across my lower lip, as though he’s trying to coax the answer out of me.
“There’s no way out of this,” he murmurs, leaning closer, that infuriatingly beautiful smile still lingering on his lips. “Do you understand?”
My heart melts into a warm little puddle, because seeing him like this is everything I ever wanted.
Devoted, unyielding, and alive.
But I can’t just nod and agree to something like that. The entire bloodline of women who fought for our rights would probably rise from their graves and slap me.