Page 135 of Crushed Vow

“Some nights, I sit outside your door and just... listen. For your footsteps. For your breathing. Just so I know you’re still here. Still alive. I see you walking around this house like a ghost and I know I did that to you. I ruined the girl who used to laugh like the world couldn’t touch her.”

He dropped his hand from my jaw to my knee, holding it like a prayer he didn’t deserve to speak.

“I regret every second of it. All of it. Not just the chains or the words I carved into you, but the moments I should’ve held you and didn’t. The times I could’ve told you the truth and chose control instead. The night I told the doctors to let your mother die... I stole that decision from you, Charlotte. You weren’t even present, and I played God. And I’d do anything to take it back.”

He drew a shaky breath, eyes glistening.

His voice broke completely then.

“I see your pain when you think no one’s watching. But I’m always watching. Through the cameras. Through the cracks. Not to control you—God, never again—but because I’m terrified. Terrified you’ll disappear again and I’ll never find you.”

“I know I don’t deserve another chance. I know I’ve scorched every bridge between us. But I need you to know—what I feel for you... it’s not obsession. It’s not about vaults or revenge or some twisted idea of ownership. It’s grief. It’s worship. It’s love so deep it makes breathing hurt.”

I stared at him through the blur of my tears, chest rising with each trembling breath.

The urn pressed to my heart. A reminder of everything I’d lost.

His hands trembled on the floor. “When I asked you to watch a movie with me,” Cassian said hoarsely, “and you refused...”

He trailed off. His throat worked like he was trying to swallow glass.

“I went to the corner of my study,” he continued, his voice cracking, “and I lost control.”

He didn’t look at me. His fists clenched at his sides, his knuckles flexing like they remembered the damage. “I punched the wall. Over and over. Until the plaster cracked. Until the blood started to splatter on the white paint. I didn’t stop. My knuckles tore open. I think I hit bone. And I still didn’t stop. Because for a moment, that pain—” he exhaled, broken, “—it was the only thing louder than the sound of you saying no.”

He finally turned to look at me. “It hurt, Charlotte. Not because you rejected the movie. But because you couldn’t even sit beside me for an hour. Because the thought of being close to me made you sick.”

His voice dipped lower, eerily calm, but underneath it trembled devastation.

“It kills me,” he whispered, “that every time you look at me, you see a monster. And maybe I am. Maybe that’s all I’ve ever been. I know how to destroy. I was raised in violence. Molded by it. Love was never something I was taught—only possession, punishment, war. But I’m trying. I swear to God, I’m trying. I just... I don’t know how to love without bleeding for it.”

My heart felt like it was collapsing under the weight of his sorrow.

I reached out, hand trembling, and touched his cheek.

His skin was warm. Damp.

His mouth parted slightly, like something inside him was trying to crawl free.

But no words came.

“Cassian...” I whispered. “Please... let me go.”

He flinched. Like the words struck deeper than any knife I could’ve held.

“Charlotte—”

“No.” My voice was shaking. But I didn’t back down. “Listen to me.”

He stilled, breath shallow.

“I need space. A new city. New air. New people. New bonds.” My voice cracked. “Everything here—everything tied to you—is suffocating me. I can’t breathe.”

His jaw tensed. But he didn’t speak.

“My mental health is spiraling, Cassian. I’m not just hurting—I’m vanishing.” I pressed a hand to my chest, gasping through tears. “I stabbed myself. I don’t even remember doing it. I disassociated so badly I forgot I had a body. I had a full psychotic break. If I stay here—around the cameras, the ghosts, the memories—I will die.”

He inhaled sharply. Like I’d yanked his soul from his lungs.