Page 38 of All’s Fair In Love & War (The Bulgari Cartel #2)

I popped the cap and stared at the pills like they might save me from myself.

All I needed was one, maybe two, something to make me feel whole again, to silence the scratching under my skin that felt like insects trying to claw their way out.

Because even surrounded by power, pleasure, and eyes that wanted me, I still felt invisible.

The craving was a living thing now, demanding and desperate, and I both worshipped and despised its hold on me.

I brought the pill to my lips, my hand steady despite the monkey riding my back. The moment it touched my tongue, both bitter and familiar, the door creaked open, and I froze. My heart dropped like a stone, and blood rushed to my face so fast it made me dizzy.

Khalil stepped inside as if he already knew something was off. His gaze swept the room, then landed on me—on my hand, on the bottle, on the guilt that hadn’t even had time to settle.

He didn’t speak right away. Didn’t yell or ask what the fuck I was doing. He just stared, his expression unreadable, but his eyes said everything.

There was disappointment etched deep in his stare, like he’d expected better from me and hated that he hadn’t gotten it.

Disbelief followed, swift and silent, as if he couldn’t quite process what he was seeing, not after the night we just had.

And beneath all of it, his eyes expressed the betrayal he felt, and that stung more than anything he could’ve said out loud.

Khalil didn’t just walk in on me taking a pill.

He walked in on the facade I had built with confidence and carefully timed smirks.

He saw a junkie struggling to stay clean, reaching out for something to quiet the noise.

He didn’t catch me slipping. Nah, he caught me unraveling—alone, vulnerable, and risking everything for a high I couldn’t relinquish.

What gutted me most wasn’t the silence or the disappointment.

It was the way he looked at me, like he’d finally seen the truth, and it matched everything he feared I was behind the performance.

The shame settled in my chest like cement, because I had let him see the one version of me I never wanted him to witness again.

The broken one. The addicted one. The one who didn’t have a single ounce of control left.

A single tear slid down my cheek without permission, ratting me out before I could spin a lie. Betrayal from my own damn body.

“You really about to do that?” Khalil asked, voice low but edged in steel, cutting through the silence like a switchblade.

I opened my mouth to lie to say it wasn’t what it looked like, but the truth sat like concrete in my throat.

“I wasn’t—” I started, but my voice cracked right down the middle.

He took a step closer, and it felt like the walls moved with him. His presence alone shifted the gravity in the room, and I hated how small I felt. How exposed. How fucking pitiful I looked with my knees buckled, lip trembling, and eyes glassy. A parody of control.

“Give me that shit,” Khalil said, palm open, tone sharp enough to carve through bone. “All of it.”

For a second, I thought about telling him to go to hell and clutching the pills to my chest like they were holy.

However, that version of me, the fire starter, the smart mouth, the girl who weaponized her pain before anyone else could, was quiet now.

Shrinking. Hiding in the corners of my shame.

Not because I feared him, but because I feared what he saw.

He wasn’t looking at the temptress I dressed up as, and not the spoiled little manipulator I played on a loop.

Khalil saw the raw version. The haunted one.

The girl who didn’t feel human unless she was falling and taking everyone with her, and I could see the disappointment, maybe even the grief.

I didn’t want to be the reason he looked like that.

Nonetheless, I still shook my head and clutched the bottle like it was the last photograph of someone I'd loved and lost, my knuckles becoming red with the effort.

I tried to swallow the pill, but Khalil was on me in seconds, his thumbs pressing at the hinges of my jaw.

We wrestled as his fingers dug into the hollows of my cheeks, forcing tears I didn't want to shed, and I fought him even as some quiet, buried part of me begged to be stopped.

When the pill slipped past my tongue, for a second, I thought I could get away with it, but then, he fished the pill from my throat with two fingers and pried the bottle from my hand.

He trembled slightly as he wiped my saliva on his shirt, the only sign that this hurt him as much as it hurt me.

Afterward, he emptied my pouch, scooped up every little thing that rattled, and didn't say another word as he shoved it all into his pocket.

I wanted to rage. To scream. To claw at his face. To curse him out and storm off to find my lost dignity, but what I actually did was collapse back on my heels, edging away from his reach, humiliation burning up my cheeks, shame coiling around my throat tighter than his fingers had been.

Khalil didn’t say anything for a heartbeat, just knelt until we were level, eyes burning into mine.

Then he did the last thing I expected. He wrapped me in his arms, pressed my head to his chest, and held me.

Not tight, not to hurt or restrain, just firm enough that I couldn’t fold up and vanish into the floor.

I could feel his heartbeat, steady where mine was frantic, and I didn't hug him back, but my forehead pressed harder against his chest, a surrender my words would never allow.

I hated how safe it felt. How easily I melted into the cage of his arms, letting his steady heartbeat trick my scrambled brain into thinking I belonged here… with him. For the first time in maybe my whole fucked-up life, I felt lighter with someone holding me, not heavier.

But that only made me angrier.

I hated that he still wanted to hold me, even like this.

After about a minute, I tried to push him away. “You like seeing me like this, huh?” I screamed, voice hoarse. “Does it make you feel needed? Maybe you think you can fix me?”

He didn’t let me go, only shifted his weight so I couldn’t squirm away as he said, quiet but clear, “No.”

“Well, that’s what you’ll be doing as long as you keep me. I’m weak, and I can’t be left alone for five minutes without crawling back to my old shit.”

“You’re not weak. Stubborn—but not weak,” he said it was like a goddamn fact.

I looked up at him, ready to tell him to fuck off before he could say more.

“You should let me fall?” I whispered.

Khalil shook his head once. “Not a fucking chance.”

And that was the moment I broke, for real this time. Because part of me wanted him to walk away. To leave me to the vices I knew. But the part that stayed quiet most of the time? The part that wanted something real, so I leaned in and let myself be held.

“I see you. You want a fix? Fine. But you’re not getting it from a pill. You’re getting it from me,” he said, like another demand. Like a challenge.

I tried to laugh, but my mouth trembled. “That’s not how it works.”

“It does for me.”

He let me go, only to sit cross-legged right in front of me on the closet floor, like we were seven instead of two adults. He held out his hand, offering me comfort, and I stared at it like it might bite me.

“Take it,” he said, quieter, but somehow more commanding.

So I did. My palm landed in his, and it was so much bigger than mine, so much steadier.

His thumb traced little circles on the back of my hand.

It was so gentle, it undid me more than any choke or slap or filthy word ever had.

I tried to look away from his face, to pull my hand back, but he wouldn’t let me.

He let us sit just like that, the two of us mute and folded in on ourselves, until the heat burning behind my eyes cooled off. I could hear myself breathing, and the old trembling in my chest slowed, almost matching the rhythm of his thumb, lazily looping over my skin.

At some point, I started crying, really ugly tears, and I mean a snot-and-mascara-mix, blotchy, hot mess, and Khalil didn’t cringe from it. He kept running his thumb over my knuckles, his eyes never leaving me, even when I tried to turn away and hide.

When the jagged, dry-heave sobs died down, he finally spoke. “You can keep faking with everyone else, but you don’t get to lie to me.”

His voice wasn’t soft, though his words weren’t gentle, nor were they comforting. They were honest, and he cut through the bullshit, leaving just me and him and all the fractured, leaking pieces between us.

I hiccuped, wiped my nose with the back of my wrist, and tried to steady my voice. “I don’t need you to save me.”

“Good. Because I don’t want to be your fucking savior.”

“Then what do you call this?” I asked and paused, letting the question sit between us like a weighted bag of dope.

For a minute, it looked like maybe he wouldn’t answer. Maybe he didn’t know, or maybe he was trying to decide if he was willing to say the truth out loud.

Finally—“I’m the only one who's not scared of all your ugly shit. I want the real you, the nasty shit and the pretty shit, even when you can’t stand it yourself.” He squeezed my palm in his. “Especially then.”

The words hit me in the solar plexus. I didn’t know how to process such direct acceptance.

For a long time, I just sat there, letting my head throb and my chest cool until I could see straight.

When I finally pulled my hand away, I didn’t do it to escape.

I did it to wipe my face, properly this time, and then I managed to look him in the eye.

“If you want the real me, you better be prepared,” I said, surprised by how steady I sounded, even with my heart still cracked open and leaking.

“For what?” he asked, watching me too closely.

“For disappointment. For relapse. For fucking everything up the second things start to feel good.” I blinked hard, forcing myself not to cry again. “For the spiral. The silence. The days I won’t talk and the nights I won’t sleep. I’m not a safe bet.”

“Good,” he said, his thumb resuming that slow drag over my skin like he hadn’t just heard me say I was walking, talking C4. “I’m not looking for safe.”

I stared at him, breath caught somewhere between my ribs, and for the first time, I didn’t know whether I wanted to kiss him or run. Maybe both.

“I’m serious,” I warned, my voice softer. “You keep reaching for me, and you’re gonna get cut.”

Khalil leaned in, not too close, but close enough for me to feel his certainty, his heat, and his promise.

“Then we’ll bleed together.”

That was it.

That was the line that did me in. Nobody had ever wanted to stand in the wreckage with me before. They all just wanted to fix it or pretend it wasn’t there. But him? He wanted the wreckage.

He wanted me, and fuck, I wasn’t ready, but for once, I didn’t want to run, I didn’t want to lie, and I didn’t want to disappear into the high. So I didn’t. Instead, I remained seated in my closet, silent, bare, and broken, but breathing.

And he stayed, too.

Neither of us moved. Not because we didn’t know how this would end, but because, for the first time, we didn’t care.