Page 75 of Sage Haven

To enforce the distance, I’d created between us.

That was the lie I clung to that was splintering at the edges.

Because the truth?

I needed to know if she would come back.

If I’d left enough of a scar that she couldn’t stop herself from coming back.

And deep down—far beneath the cold logic and strategy I built my life on—Iwanted her to rebel.

To defy me.

To storm right back onto my property and demand answers.

But she didn’t and I knew she wouldn’t.

I’d pushed her just far enough away to keep her alive, and just close enough that I could still feel the absence of her eyes on me.

And the hurt in them.

The betrayal that I had caused.

What happened at the festival and the drink laced with God-knows-what, the way she trusted too easily, too fully, was proof enough that she needed protection.

The kind I couldn’t give her yet.

The kind I wasn’t sure I could ever give her.

Because keeping her alive meant keeping her under control and I wasn’t in control anymore.

I told myself she was safer confined to her apartment.

Safer in isolation.

Safer haunted by her own mind than stepping out into a world filled with monsters who wouldn’t hesitate to destroy her.

Better to endure silence, loneliness—than to walk straight into the jaws of something she couldn’t even see coming.

Even if that meant she hated me.

Even if it hollowed her out.

Even if it hollowed me out, too.

But time wasn’t on my side.

And I needed more of it.

Every day I waited, it felt like I was tearing strips of flesh from my own body, piece by agonizing piece.

Eventually, I cracked.

I told myself I’d only check in from a distance.

That I’d stay detached.

That I’d only use the lens I’d hidden behind her headboard in case of emergencies.