Page 133 of Crushed Vow

I burned down the safehouse in Prague because it still had the scent of her shampoo in the pillows.

I got her name tattooed on the inside of my thigh so when I bleed out, it’s the last thing they’ll see.

I injected myself with the same slow venom I used on my enemies. One drop a day.

Because if she’s not coming back, I don’t want to live long enough to forget her.

And the worst part?

The absolute worst part?

I deserve this.

Every scream. Every hallucination. Every morning I wake up thinking she’s lying beside me only to feel the cold void of where she used to be.

She’s not just gone.

She left me.

And I don’t think she’s ever coming back.

The pages blurred as tears filled my eyes. Each entry was raw. Painful. A confession he’d never spoken aloud. Pages and pages of guilt. Of therapy sessions, night terrors, self-loathing. Every monstrous thing he’d done, documented in his own words.

Not for sympathy.

Not for absolution.

But because he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Because he couldn’t stop thinking about me.

What he did to me.

What he became because of me.

Or maybe... despite me.

My fingers trembled as I closed the journal, hugging it to my chest like a relic of war—some sacred text written in violence and regret.

I swallowed thickly, my throat raw, my voice almost unrecognizable as it cracked open.

“What do you even see in me?”

The words sounded so small, so broken. I hated how real they felt.

“I don’t have breasts. The psych ward shattered something in me. Maybe everything. I’m... unwell, Cassian. I talk to shadows. I don’t sleep. I flinch when someone touches me. I scream at myself in mirrors. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

I looked away, ashamed.

“I have to pad my chest just to feel like I belong in my own skin. I feel like a fraud. Like some twisted, mutilated thing pretending to be a woman. I’m not beautiful. I’m not whole.”

“I’m undeserving of love. So tell me, Cassian. What the hell do you see in me to be this obsessed?”

He didn’t answer right away.

His hand rose slowly, warm against my skin, and he cradled my jaw with a reverence that undid me.

His thumb brushed the tear tracks on my cheek, and his voice, when he spoke, was hoarse. Gentle. But firm.