Page 40

T he ruins of Sweet Summer's surrounded us—walls half-finished, copper veins exposed like arteries torn from flesh. Dust coated everything in gray ash, the remnants of dreams we were building from bone and blood. Paint cans sat in corners like monuments to what hadn't been destroyed yet.

She moved through the skeleton of her bakery like a ghost haunting her own future. Every gesture was recorded in the obsessive inventory I kept of her existence—the way her fingers traced unfinished surfaces, how her shoulders tensed when I shifted position, the precise angle of her chin when she was trying not to look at me.

I stood near the back wall, bat resting against exposed brick. The weight of it used to comfort me—solid, familiar, the promise of ruin when words failed. Now it felt foreign. Wrong. Like carrying a part of myself I was ready to amputate.

Three feet of space stretched between us. The distance she'd carved from my need, measured in flinches and held breath.

Three feet might as well have been three miles. Or three inches. The numbers didn't matter when every cell in my body knew exactly how to close that gap. Pin her against the counter. Force her to see what she'd become to me—the only thing standing between me and the kind of carnage that would make headlines for weeks.

I didn't move.

My hands wanted to reach for her. Not from fear—from starvation. Every muscle screamed to close the distance. The closest thing to agony my body knew.

Last night changed us. Last night, she held a knife over my chest and couldn't use it. Last night, I drugged myself into defenselessness. She'd heard me beg phantoms not to take me again. Heard me plead about five being enough, about staying quiet, about someone making me prettier for when they came. She'd witnessed me reduced to fragments—begging her not to let them come tonight, not to leave me alone with the echoes of footsteps on stairs.

She'd seen the boy who counted pills and knew exactly what they meant. Who'd learned that love was something done to you while you stayed quiet and still. Who'd been taught that prettiness was currency and silence was survival.

And she'd stayed.

Not because she forgave me. Because she couldn't leave me broken on the floor, begging phantoms from my past. The girl who fainted at sharp objects had held a blade over my heart, and when she couldn't use it, something inside her had shifted. Cracked. Started to understand the language I spoke.

I'd corrupted her. Turned her into someone who recognized the monster because I'd planted seeds of night in soil that was never meant to grow anything but light.

She used to faint at sharp objects. Now she gripped blades with only a slight tremble. I did that to her. I turned her into someone who could hold a knife steady over a man's heart. That wasn't love—that was breeding killers.

The worst part wasn't that I'd destroyed her innocence. The worst part was how beautiful she looked doing it.

"V?" Her voice cut through my thoughts, through the constant watch of threat and opportunity that passed in my skull.

I'd been staring again. Always staring. Drinking in every detail like a man dying of thirst, who'd found the only water that mattered. The way dust caught in her hair, how her pulse jumped beneath the skin I'd memorized in Braille.

"You're thinking about last night," she said. Not a question. She was learning to read the monster, decode the patterns that meant danger or desire or the thin line where they bled together.

"Always thinking about you."

The honesty escaped before I could cage it. Unfiltered. The kind of truth that made normal people uncomfortable because it carried the weight of obsession, the metallic taste of something that wasn't quite sane.

Her fingers found the ring on her left hand—the ring I'd forced there while she was unconscious, drugged into compliance, stripped of choice. She twisted it without thinking, a nervous habit that had developed since our wedding. Since I'd stolen her future and called it love.

She never used to fidget. Never used to twist jewelry or bite her lip or look over her shoulder. I gave her those habits. Wrote anxiety into her DNA with my own hands.

"You can take it off," I said.

The words hit the air like a confession. Her hand stilled, fingers frozen around the band that had become a shackle we both pretended was jewelry.

"What?"

"The ring." My voice came out rougher than intended, scraped raw from holding back everything I wanted to say. "You can take it off."

She stared at me like I'd spoken in a different language, like the concept was so foreign it couldn't translate. Her fingers moved to the band, hesitating. She started to slide it up her finger—just a fraction, barely visible movement—then stopped.

My chest caved. The hesitation hurt worse than refusal. The moment where she considered freedom and pulled back from it.

Her face had gone pale, fingers trembling against the metal. She was remembering. The chapel. The dress I'd chosen. How I'd slipped the ring on while she was unconscious and called it a ceremony.

"I won't stop you."

The weight stretched between us, heavy with what I was offering. Last night, the drugs had made me honest about things I'd buried under decades of corpses.

I hurt her. Actually, physically, systematically hurt her. Not protected her from the world's cruelty—I'd become it. I was the monster she needed saving from, the thing that went bump in the night and called it love.

I drugged her unconscious. Forced her into a wedding dress while she couldn't fight back. Made her speak vows to a man she feared while chemicals kept her compliant. Stole her name, her future, her right to choose—and convinced myself it was romantic.

She thought I didn't understand what I did. I did. I understood it with surgical detail. I didn't just steal her body—I rewrote her future and called it love. Etched my name into her bones and convinced myself it was devotion.

Every time she flinched afterward. Every silence. Every step away from me. I earned every fucking one.

But I wanted more than her compliance now. I wanted her to choose me. To look at me and see something worth staying for, not just someone too dangerous to leave. I wanted her to want me back—not the scared submission I'd forced from her, but something real. Something given freely.

If she walked away, I'd become the thing that hunted in the shadows again. She was the only reason I hadn't burned this city down. I counted her heartbeats last night while she sat with me on that floor. Memorized the rhythm so I'd have something to remember when she was gone.

I'd been obsessed with owning her. Now I was obsessed with earning her. The difference was everything. The difference was the space between taking and being given, between caging something beautiful and being worthy of its song.

She moved away from me then, walking to the far end of the counter, putting distance between us while she processed what I'd offered. Her palm smoothed over the surface, testing the height I'd built specifically for her body, measured against her sleeping form while she dreamed of things I'd never be part of.

Her movements were different now. Calculated. She checked exits without realizing it, kept me in her peripheral vision. Survival instincts I'd taught her.

"You built this lower," she pointed out.

"For you."

Her eyebrows furrowed. "Why?"

"So you don't hurt yourself."

She turned back to me, and something in her expression had shifted. Not forgiveness. Not trust. But recognition. Like she was seeing something in the ruins that might be worth excavating.

After a long moment, she moved toward the doorway, her path taking her past where I stood. I stepped aside, giving her space, and she paused near the exit.

The chemicals had stripped me down to bone and truth last night. Made me that terrified boy again, the one who begged her not to let them come tonight, who remembered what five meant, who still heard footsteps on stairs that led nowhere good. She'd witnessed me fight drugs that couldn't make me feel pain but could make me relive everything else—every shameful memory of being made pretty, every lesson about staying quiet, every reason I learned love meant taking what you wanted from someone smaller.

The sedatives had made me honest in ways violence never could. Turned me inside out, let her see the machinery that built the monster. Every shameful memory of what they did when the woman made me pretty. Every broken piece of the boy who learned that five was always enough. Every reason I learned to equate love with control—because control meant no one could make you prettier, make you smaller, make you count pills like promises that tomorrow might be different.

"You hurt me, V." The words came out soft, broken. Like she'd been carrying them since our wedding night and finally had to let them bleed.

My eyes dropped to the concrete stained with sawdust and sweat. She was right. I'd hurt her. But this was different. This was worse. This was using love as a weapon against someone who'd never learned to defend herself.

"I know." Two words. Not an apology—not yet. Acknowledgment. The first time I'd ever admitted causing her pain instead of spinning fairy tales about protection.

She was quiet for a long time, studying my face like she was reading a map to somewhere she'd never been. Looking for signs of the boy I'd shown her last night, the one who begged phantoms not to take him.

"I don't know if I can forgive you," she said.

"You shouldn't."

"But I want to try to understand."

Understanding. The most dangerous gift she could offer. Because understanding meant seeing all of it—not just the monster, but the assembly line that made him. The systematic destruction of everything human until only the weapon remained.

She was trying to find something worth saving in the wreckage I'd made of myself. I wasn't going to help. Wasn't going to guide her toward whatever light might be left in the basement of my soul.

But I wouldn't stop her either.

"You could leave," I said. "Right now. Take the ring off. Walk out that door. I'd let you."

The words tasted like swallowing glass. Like bleeding internally while pretending to breathe. But they were true.

The drugs had taught me the difference between keeping someone and earning them. Between building cages so perfect the prisoner forgot they were captive and being worthy of someone's choice to stay.

"Would you really?" she asked.

"Yes."

The word came out broken. Honest. Because I finally understood what love actually meant. Not keeping someone. Not forcing them to stay. But letting them choose you every day. And if they chose wrong—if they chose someone else, something else, anywhere else—you let them go.

Even if it killed you. Especially if it did.

She studied my face, looking for the lie. The catch. The moment I'd reveal this was just another trap, another manipulation designed to tighten the chains I'd wrapped around her wrists.

But there wasn't one. This was surrender. Complete. Final. The kind that left you bleeding on the floor, hoping the person you'd destroyed might find something worth saving in the ruins.

I wanted her to love me. Not fear me, not submit to me, not stay because she had no choice—but actually love me. The way she'd touched my face last night, gentle as forgiveness I hadn't earned. I wanted her to do that because she wanted to, not because I was broken and pathetic on the floor.

The obsession was evolving into something I'd never felt before. Something that hurt worse than suffocation, crushed deeper than broken ribs. Something that made me want to be worthy of her instead of just taking what I craved.

"We should go home," she said finally.

Home. She said it like it still meant something. Like it still included me. Like the space we shared hadn't been irreparably poisoned by what I'd done in the name of love.

"Are you coming?" she asked.

"If you want me to."

"... You can." She hesitated at first, and I could see her weighing those words, measuring the distance between honesty and safety.

Her hand kept going to the ring, twisting it. Three times in the first block. She was testing the weight of what I'd offered, rolling it around in her mind like a pill she wasn't sure she could swallow.

I didn't try to close the gap between us. Didn't step up beside her like I used to. This was her pace. Her choice. Her rules.

The setting sun painted everything gold—her hair, her skin, the careful space she maintained between us. I memorized every detail, filed it away in the obsessive catalog I kept of moments that mattered.

At our front door, she stopped. Turned to look at me with something I couldn't name. Not forgiveness. Not trust. But maybe the beginning of something that could grow into choice.

Her fingers moved to the ring one last time. Hesitated. Then her hand dropped to her side.

The ring stayed on. But something had shifted. She'd given herself permission to consider what I'd offered. That was more than I deserved.

She'd touched my face last night. And for the first time in my life, I'd felt something other than the constant screaming in my skull.

I didn't have a name for it. But the voices had gone quiet.

She walked ahead. I didn't try to catch up.

I used to make choices for her.

Today, I followed hers.