Page 17

His footsteps retreated, followed by the soft sounds of him moving around the kitchen. A crash followed by muffled cursing told me his hands weren't as steady as he wanted me to believe. The simple normality of making tea after nearly being strangled was so absurd it almost made me laugh. Almost.

I don't know how long I sat on the bathroom floor. Long enough for my legs to go numb and my breathing to steady. Long enough to rebuild some semblance of my usual walls. Eventually, I splashed cold water on my face and forced myself to look in the mirror.

"Get your shit together," I muttered to my reflection. "This isn't about you."

I unlocked the bathroom door and stepped into the hallway. Vincent sat on the couch, two mugs of tea steaming on the coffee table. He wasn't looking my way, giving me space to approach or retreat as needed.

When I entered the living room, he glanced up but didn't comment on how long I'd been hiding.

Just nodded toward the second mug. "It's not great, but it's hot.

" His hands wrapped around his own mug tightly, knuckles white, betraying the calm he tried to project.

A faint red mark peeked above his borrowed t-shirt's collar, my handiwork branded onto his skin.

I sat on the opposite end of the couch, maintaining as much distance as possible.

My body still remembered the feel of him beneath me from moments ago.

Not just the violent awakening, but the heat of his skin against mine in bed before the nightmare took hold.

The memory of his bare chest brushing against mine as we'd settled under the covers earlier sent an inappropriate flicker of heat through me despite the horror of what followed.

"I'm not going back to that bed," I said finally, voice raw. "I'll sleep out here. Or not sleep. Whatever. Just stay the fuck away from me."

I expected Vincent to be relieved, to jump at the chance to put a solid door between himself and the psychopath who'd nearly strangled him. Instead, he hesitated, studying me. "Would you rather be alone? Or would it help if I stayed?"

"You'd stay? After I almost killed you? Are you fucking insane?"

"Possibly," he acknowledged. "But I'm also observing that you're in distress."

"My distress? I nearly choked you to death and you're worried about my fucking distress?" A harsh laugh escaped, edged with hysteria. "I don't need a therapy session, Vince. I need to be locked in a goddamn cage."

Vincent didn't flinch at my outburst. Instead, he moved closer, sitting in the armchair across from me. Close enough to talk, far enough I couldn't reach without lunging.

"Why are you like this?" I asked, unable to comprehend his reaction. "Normal people would be running for their lives right now."

"Like what?"

"So..." I gestured vaguely, struggling to articulate something I'd never encountered. "Steady. Rational. When I scare the shit out of most people, they don't stick around asking how they can help."

"I became a therapist because I believe people are not defined by their worst moments or their trauma," he said.

"What I saw tonight was someone caught in a nightmare who still managed to stop themselves.

That's not about who you are. It's about what you're carrying.

" He paused, rubbing his throat unconsciously.

"I'm a fucking powder keg waiting to go off. Christ, Vincent, I've murdered forty-seven people. What part of that suggests I deserve your... whatever this is?"

"Forty-eight," Vincent corrected quietly. "You mentioned killing Hector yesterday. "

I stared. "Are you seriously keeping count? What the fuck kind of therapist are you?"

"The kind with a good memory. You saved me yesterday," he said simply. "You killed someone specifically to prevent them from killing me. Those decisions matter too."

A humorless laugh escaped. "Yeah, well. Limited career options when you're raised by psychopaths."

"There are always choices, Luka. You've been making different ones recently."

I stared at the thin line of blood on his neck, physical evidence of how close I'd come to destroying the one selfish thing I'd ever wanted for myself.

The cascade of decisions bringing me here felt less like choices and more like compulsions.

Watching him through the scope. Not pulling the trigger.

Killing Hector. Bringing him to the Acropolis.

Each step felt inevitable, like gravity.

"I should go back to bed," Vincent said after a moment, seeming to sense I needed space. "Will you be okay out here?"

I nodded, suddenly exhausted. "Yeah. Thanks for not, you know, freaking out."

"Oh, I'm definitely freaking out," he assured me with a wry smile that somehow made me feel better. "I'm just doing it very quietly and professionally."

I laughed. "Of course you are."

He stood, hesitating before heading back toward the bedroom. At the doorway, he paused and looked back. "For what it's worth, Luka, beneath all that darkness and trauma, I think you're a good man."

Before I could respond, he was gone, closing the door quietly behind him .

I stretched out on the couch, too wound up to sleep but too exhausted to do anything else. Vincent's words ricocheted through my skull. He thought I was a good man.

He couldn't be more wrong. I existed as the antithesis of good, a weapon crafted specifically to destroy lives. But still...

It meant something, no, everything, that he thought otherwise. A warmth bloomed behind my sternum where nothing but ice had lived for decades.