Chapter 13 #2
But at some point, my body simply gave up resisting.
And I fell asleep.
Still in his arms.
When I woke, the world was unchanged.
Still dark.
But I was not where I remembered falling asleep.
For a moment, I didn’t move.
My cheek rested against something warm and firm, rising and falling in a slow rhythm. It took me a second to understand what I was feeling.
His chest.
I was lying on him.
My breath caught slightly.
Carefully, I lifted my head, tilting it as if that would somehow help me understand what I couldn’t see.
But there were no visual cues to read. No expression to interpret. No eyelids fluttering.
Only the steady presence beneath me.
If he was awake, he didn’t move.
If he was asleep, I couldn’t tell.
That uncertainty should have made me tense.
Instead, it made me oddly still.
I shifted slowly, careful not to disturb him, and slid off his chest until I was sitting on the edge of the bed.
The moment I moved, I felt it.
His hand—previously resting on my back—slipped away with a soft, unconscious drop onto the mattress.
He was asleep.
That realization settled strangely in my chest.
Rafael had fallen asleep while I was on top of him.
I sat there quietly, listening.
His breathing remained steady.
Unguarded in a way I had never heard from him in waking moments.
It made something in my chest twist.
Slowly, I pulled my legs in closer to myself, resting my hands on my lap.
I should have left the bed immediately. I should have created distance.
That was what made sense. But I didn’t move right away.
Instead, I stayed there for a few extra seconds, listening to his breathing in the quiet room.
Eventually, I stood.
But the moment I was fully upright, I froze.
I realized I didn’t know how to move through this room.
It wasn’t mine, and the mental image I had of it felt unreliable at best.
One wrong step and I might hit something—worse, I might wake him.
I stayed still for a moment, listening.
Then, instinctively, I lifted my hands slightly, uncertain, hovering them in front of me as though they could somehow map the space better than memory ever could.
An old habit I hadn’t relied on in a long time.
The silence felt delicate now—fragile in a way I didn’t want to disturb.
I didn’t want to wake him.
Not after everything that had just happened. Not after I had broken down in his arms like something that had forgotten how to hold itself together.
I had barely taken the first three steps when his voice cut through the silence.
It wasn’t the controlled Rafael I had grown used to.
It wasn’t even the cold, calculating man who spoke of death like strategy.
This voice was strained and broken.
“Zara...” he whispered.
My breath stalled.
“...Zara, no... don’t fucking give up on me.”
My fingers curled instinctively.
His voice sharpened, rising with something that sounded nothing like control.
“Don’t! I won’t be able to continue existing if you die... just stay alive, okay? Please!”
A pause.
A harsh inhale.
Then again, louder, fractured with desperation:
“Fucking please, stay alive!”
My chest tightened painfully.
I turned my head toward him even though I couldn’t see him, as if that would somehow make sense of what I was hearing.
My blind eyes stared into nothing, but my body reacted as if I could still interpret the scene.
He wasn’t here with me anymore.
Not in this moment.
He was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere I couldn’t reach.
“Please...” he gasped, breath turning ragged now. “Please... please...please, Zara...”
The words hit me like a physical blow.
My stomach dropped so sharply I had to steady myself against the air itself.
Even in sleep, even in vulnerability, she was still there.
Still the part of him I could never compete with.
A strange ache spread through my chest.
I stood there, listening to him suffer in a place I couldn’t enter.
And for the first time since I had met him—
I understood something I had been avoiding.
The safety I had felt in his arms earlier hadn’t come from freedom.
It had come from distraction.
From a man who could hold me tightly, kiss me with desperate certainty, and still belong entirely to someone else in his mind.
My throat tightened.
Slowly, carefully, I turned away from the bed.
Each step felt heavier than the last.
I stretched my hands forward cautiously, sweeping them through the air until my fingers brushed the wall sooner than expected.
I exhaled quietly in relief and followed it.
Step by step.
Familiar motion returning.
But my mind wasn’t steady.
It kept replaying his voice.
“Don’t! I won’t be able to continue existing if you die... just stay alive, okay? Please!”
The words looped like a wound reopening each time.
The hallway felt colder than it had before.
Eventually my fingers found the doorframe.
I paused there.
Still not moving.
I turned my head slightly back toward the room, even though I couldn’t see him.
I didn’t need sight to imagine it anymore.
Rafael sleeping.
Rafael breaking in dreams.
Rafael belonging somewhere I could never follow.
Even unconscious, even vulnerable, even holding me—
He still went back to her.
I swallowed hard.
Then quietly stepped out, pulling the door shut behind me with a soft click that felt too final in the silence.
In the hallway,
I lifted my phone and spoke softly.
“Siri, call Ramiro.”
The call connected almost immediately.
“Miss Loretta?” Ramiro’s voice came through, alert despite the hour.
“I’m outside Rafael’s room,” I said quietly.
My voice felt strange in my ears—thicker than I intended, controlled only by effort.
“I... I don’t know the way back to mine. Can you come get me?”
A brief pause.
Then immediately, “On my way.”
The line ended.
I lowered the phone slowly, letting my hand rest against the wall for balance.
The silence returned.
But it wasn’t the same silence anymore.
It felt heavier.
My mind kept circling back to him—his voice breaking in sleep, the way he said her name like it still had the power to pull him apart.
And I hated myself a little.
Because beneath the pain, beneath the confusion, beneath everything I should have been feeling, there was still a part of me that remembered him.
His arms around me. His kiss—hard, consuming, almost desperate.
A part of me that didn’t want to let go of that feeling.
Even knowing exactly where his heart still belonged.