Page 185 of Little Spider

Surrounded by ghosts that wear my name.

Because this isn’t a love story anymore.

It’s a requiem for the man I thought I was.

And the woman who loved him, anyway.

Her breath was soft against my skin, sending shivers down my spine. Like she’s fighting something in her chest—something too big to cry out, too sharp to swallow.

I don’t move.

I hold her as if I might vanish if I let go.

She smells of sweat and salt and the barest trace of my cologne—stolen from the collar of my shirt the night I made her sleep in it. That night feels a lifetime away now. Back when the game still had rules. Back when I thought I could keep parts of myself caged if I just kept the locks tight enough.

But she undid them all. Not with defiance. Not even with obedience.

With trust.

And that’s the fucking tragedy, isn’t it?

That she trusted me.

Trusted the hand that fed her, cuffed her, fucked her—and never knew that same hand wrote her first message.

Little spider.

My throat locks.

I feel her shift, just barely—her cheek brushing along the base of my neck as she breathes deeper now, slower. There’s nopanic in her. No scream caught in her lungs. Just gravity. Just the weight of everything we are and everything we’ll never be again.

“I knew it,” she says, voice hoarse. “Not with words. Not with proof. But… I knew.”

My chest goes still.

She pulls back, just enough to look up at me. Her eyes are glassy but steady.

“You talked like him sometimes. You watched like him. Even when you pretended not to.”

I don’t defend it.

I can’t.

She presses a hand to my chest. Flat. Soft. Her palm over my heart like she’s checking for something human still beating.

“I hated you for it,” she says. “And I hated myself more for staying.”

“I never wanted you afraid,” I say too quietly.

She arches a brow. “Then why did you make fear the only language we spoke?”

I flinch.

Because she’s right.

I built this.

Made her small so I could feel bigger. Made her afraid so I could feel necessary.