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Stockholm syndrome, my mind whispers. But it’s more complicated than that, isn’t it? The line between captor and savior has smudged beyond recognition. The game levels, the tests, the way he broke me down—was it destruction or deconstruction? Am I being remade or unmade?

I can’t hold onto the questions as they flit through my consciousness. My body yields to his touch, to the relief of finally letting go. My breathing slows. The tension drains from my muscles one by one.

He’s humming under his breath now, a melody I almost recognize. The sound vibrates through his fingers into my skin. It should feel invasive. Instead, it feels like being wrapped in a weighted blanket—heavy, secure, impossible to fight against.

My last coherent thought before sleep claims me is that I’ve never felt so conflicted, broken, and strangely whole. Like I’m falling apart and coming together all at once in his hands.

27

RYKER

Ican’t stop watching her breathe.

Kira has slept on my living room couch for sixteen hours and thirty-seven minutes. Her chest’s steady rise and fall becomes the only metric that matters in my universe. Every inhalation resets the stopwatch in my head—proof she’s still alive. Still mine.

This wasn’t in the plan.

I run my fingers through my hair for the thousandth time, pacing silently across the hardwood floor. My calculations never accounted for this variable—this fucking hurricane of emotion tearing through my carefully constructed systems.

What is happening to me?

The question burns through my synapses like acid. I’ve always understood myself as a machine with predictable variables and outcomes. I control the variables. Therefore, I can predict the results. Yet here I stand, my hands shaking, an ache so utterly terrifying spreading through my chest that I’m finding it nearly impossible to breathe.

Is this... love?

The word feels foreign in my mind, as if it’s part of a language I’ve never spoken. I didn’t think I had the to capacity to love. I possess. I obsess. Control—everything.

However, this all-consuming need to protect her, to see her smile—the panic I felt when I realized I’d gone too far—is not in the clinical definition of who I am.

Yesterday, something inside me broke when she wanted me to hold her in the bath. I lost the ability to calculate my next move. I just held her. I was afraid—not for myself, but for her.

I sink to my knees beside the couch, studying the curve of her cheek, the flutter of her eyelashes. My trembling hand hovers above her face, not daring to touch her. What if she’s broken beyond healing? What if I’ve completely desecrated what I’ve come to care for?

The thought of life without her now is unbearable. A gaping abyss void of her that I can never be free of. I’ve had her—felt her warmth, heard her laugh—and can’t return to the cold emptiness of before.

This isn’t an obsession. This is dependence. Weakness. Need.

This is love.

Finally, movement. Kira stirs beneath the blanket, her fingers twitching against the fabric. I freeze, holding my breath as her eyelids flutter open. She blinks slowly, taking in her surroundings with confusion before her gaze settles on me.

“Ryker,” she breathes.

My name on her lips hits me hard. Something explodes in my chest—hot and all-consuming—sending shockwaves through my nervous system. This single word from her mouth eviscerates me, recreates me, and undoes everything I thought I knew about myself.

“I’m here,” I whisper. “I’m right here, Mischief.”

My hand moves to her face without intent. I brush strands of hair back from her forehead, my fingertips trembling against her skin. I lean forward and press my lips to her brow, breathing in the scent of her—the soap from her bath, the permeating sweetness that’s uniquely Kira.

“How do you feel?” I ask.

The question isn’t tactical. It isn’t meant to gauge her physical state for the next level of my game. I genuinely need to know if she’s okay—if I’ve damaged her beyond repair. If I have, I don’t know how I will recover from the loss of her.

My thumb strokes her cheek, and I marvel at how gentle my touch has become. These hands that have coded exploits, wielded knives, built cages—these hands that have only known how to dominate—now comfort with an instinct I never knew existed within me.

She looks up at me with those eyes—those fucking beautiful eyes—and I’m paralyzed by the weight of what I feel. The surgical precision with which I’ve always navigated life has been replaced by this stifling ache.

I continue stroking her hair, each touch a revelation. I’ve memorized every inch of her from surveillance and fantasy. Still, feeling her beneath my fingertips, caring about her comfort—this is uncharted territory.