Page 83 of Cara

Hands restraining my arms, weighing down my ankles.

Xavier’s voice breaks the sound barrier.

And I'mhyperventilating.

He’s in tears, no longer touching me.

“It’sme,” he says as if he’s repeated it a hundred times.

My chest caves in, realizing where I am and what’s happening. “I'm sorry. I'm?—”

He draws me to him in a rush, dropping his head onto my shoulder, every one of his limbs shaking.

I had no idea my cheeks were wet until he turns his face to mine to kiss the moisture away.

My cheeks are so hot they’ve numbed.

In a manic haze, my eyes dash to the clock, trying to gauge the extent of this. I think I lost time. I think he struggled to pull me out of it.

Not understanding it frightens me. “Xavier…”

“I love you.” He breathes the words onto my skin. They’re a cure. A remedy I’ve been without until today. My nails sink into the shirt on his back, eyes drawing closed to listen to that sequence of words, what they mean. He repeats them over and over until he knows they are embedded in my brain. “I love you.I love you.”

Xavier

Soft sunlight sketches the curtain patterns onto Sophie’s body, exposed from the waist up, her long legs intertwined in a cream-colored sheet.

My eyes remain wide open. I triumphed whenever exhaustion tried to close them, refusing to allow the darkness to blot out her presence. Mywife.

I want to touch her, but I can’t. Years of dreaming have led me to this moment, yet I can do nothing but stop myself, not wanting to hurt her more than she already has been.

My eyes do what my hands cannot, admiring her shape. A woman I'm not entirely sure isn’t a dream I’ve conjured up.

She’s too perfect to be real.

No one could be this damn perfect.

Her hair is unruly, exquisitely unrestrained, spilling over the pillow like tousled waves. A few stragglers partially cover her eyes, accentuating the gentle outline of her face.

A redness surrounds her lashes, remnants of recent tears.

The muted scar underneath her eye, on the highest point of her cheekbone, makes me want to lash out, execute those men all over again, and take my time doing it. To even look ather lips—naturally rosy, as soft and round as these pillows—stirs a raging desire I must suppress, making me focus somewhere else. Anywhere else.

I’ve spent most of the morning memorizing the differences in her. As if destined to lead the same life, her body, like mine, is a constellation map of the people who have wronged us. A testament to our endurance to never let them win.

Long ago, my father ensured I could handle pain and that it wouldn’t break me.

But her… she wasn’t made for this kind of suffering.

When I married her, I vowed to prevent it from happening. I swore to protect her from our enemies, to keep her close so she’d never have to fear a world where I’m not beside her. My failings alone inflict more damage than any weapon could, making it impossible to remain in bed.

As I step into the bathroom, positioning myself at the mirror, I see exactly what I expected.

A man struggling to come to terms with his life.

The skin around my eyes is almost entirely dark. Sophie remains unaware of my sleepless nights, how, more often than not, I close my eyes, bombed out of my fucking mind.

That’s what her absence was… her death.