Page 95 of Crushed Vow

And yet I still felt him on my skin—like ash that wouldn’t wash off.

He sat by my bedside in a chair now, hands gripping each other. His voice had gone quiet, like he was scared even the sound of it might send me further away.

I couldn’t feel the IV needle in my arm. Couldn’t feel the bandages wrapping my legs, the gauze over my wrist. Couldn’t feel the shallow ache where my skin had split beneath the knife. I couldn’t even feel the weight of the hospital blanket.

There was a mirror across the room. The angle was just sharp enough to catch my face. My eyes looked hollow—sunken. My lips cracked. There was dried blood around my neck and collarbone. I didn’t recognize myself.

I thought I would cry again. But there were no tears left.

Cassian leaned forward slightly. I didn’t turn. I kept my gaze fixed on that horrible mirror, wondering if I could will my heart to stop.

“Charlotte...” His voice cracked. “Please. Say something. Scream at me. Rip my soul out. Just don’t go quiet on me. Not like this.”

Still, I said nothing.

Because what was there left to say?

That I was tired? That I hated my own skin? That the way the world looked at me now felt like knives?

That even now, I wanted his arms around me—but hated myself for wanting it?

My fingers twitched beneath the sheets. The only sign I was still tethered to this world.

“I’ll fix this,” he said again, softer. I didn’t answer.

My voice was buried somewhere in the blood I spilled.

Chapter 14

CHARLOTTE

Because of the looming threat to my life, Cassian had pleaded for me to live with him, to stay under his roof until I healed.

He wanted me back in our home. The house we once shared as husband and wife. The one filled with ghosts I couldn’t bury and memories I didn’t ask to remember.

Everything in me wanted to say no.

But I didn’t.

Maybe I was too tired to argue. Maybe the ache in my bones outweighed the one in my pride. Or maybe some masochistic part of me wanted to see if I could survive the same walls that once ruined me.

Now, morning crept slowly through the curtains like a haunting.

I lay stiff on the familiar bed I used to call mine, wide awake after another night of torment. My body throbbed in angry pulses—wrists aching from the bandages, my side burning with every breath where the knife had gone in.

Even my legs throbbed—as if they remembered the blade I drove into them. As if my own body hadn’t forgiven me for trying to destroy it.

The meds helped, sure, but they were just a numbing veil. The doctor had warned me: “This kind of pain takes time to fully heal.”

Cassian didn’t sleep beside me.

Instead, he spent the entire night in the study corner of the room, seated at his desk, back turned toward me.

But I felt him. The way his eyes kept glancing over his shoulder when he thought I was asleep. The way he tensed every time I shifted. He never said a word. Neither did I. My heart was too cold for conversation.

And yet... I hated how much it hurt.

Why did it still cut me so deeply that he hadn’t defended me yesterday? That he let those strangers mock me—my chest—like I was a mutilated circus act. He just stood there, smoking, silent.