Page 22 of The Vagabond

SAXON

B y the time midnight sinks its claws into the city, I’m already at her door. Getting inside? It’s effortless — muscle memory, a dance my hands know too well.

The lock yields with a quiet click, and the door creaks open slow, hesitant, almost like it knows it’s betraying her.

Inside, the air smells like her. Soft. Sweet. Jasmine and darkness. A feeling that clings to the back of my throat and makes my hands shake. I close the door behind me, slide the chain back into place.

She’s asleep on the couch. Curled on her side, blanket half slipped off, mouth slightly open, hair a tangle of soft waves. One hand dangles off the cushion— begging me to touch it.

I move closer. Quiet. Controlled. But there’s nothing calm in me. My blood is wildfire. My head’s a fucking warzone.

I crouch beside the couch, close enough to see the mascara she didn’t wash off, the faint bruises under her eyes from too little sleep, the soft twitch in her fingers like she’s still fighting something in her dreams.

She’s so goddamn beautiful, it makes me sick. I reach out. My fingers hover over hers. I don’t touch her—can’t . If I do, I won’t stop. But I want to. I want to drag that hand to my mouth and kiss it like penance. Like punishment. I want to replace every ghost she’s let in since I left.

She stirs, breath catching, but she doesn’t wake.

I should go. I should. But instead, I lean down—voice barely a breath.

“You don’t get to forget me,” I whisper. “Not when I can’t even close my eyes without seeing you.”

I sit in the chair in the corner of the room, watching the rise and fall of her breath. Moonlight kisses the edge of her cheekbone, her collarbone, her bare shoulder where the strap of her tank top slipped down.

I know this is wrong. But wrong is the only language I speak when it comes to her.

She whimpers in her sleep. Twitches. I know the signs. I’ve had enough nightmares of my own to recognize when someone’s stuck in the pit. She thrashes suddenly—gasps, sits upright, chest heaving, eyes wide and wild and wet.

And then she sees me. She goes still. So do I. Her breath catches. Her mouth parts. But she doesn’t scream. Because she knows it’s me.

The silence between us is thunderous. The weight of it presses on my ribs like a loaded gun. I sit forward slowly, elbows on my knees, hand resting on my jaw. I don’t speak. I want her to feel it first. The weight of me. The inevitability of me.

She stares at me like I’m something she summoned by mistake. Some grief-bound demon that crawled out of the hole she buried me in.

Let her be angry. Let her hate me. I’d rather be her rage than her silence.

Then I say it—low, steady, and so damn honest it cuts my throat on the way out:

“You can try to forget me, Maxine. You can even try to replace me. You can kiss little boys in button-downs. Let them buy you dinner and tell you how pretty you look with your hair up.” I pause.

Let the truth sink its claws in. “But it won’t work, Maxine.

Because I’ll always be here. I’m the shadow you sleep with.

The ache you can’t cure. You can cover it in normal, but it’ll never fit. Not for a girl like you.”

She doesn’t blink. She’s trembling, but it’s not fear that rattles her bones. It’s recognition. Because I’m not wrong, and we both fucking know it. Her lips part—maybe to argue or scream, maybe to beg me to leave before she begs me to stay. But I beat her to it.

“You want to hate me?” I ask, voice low. “Do it. You want to scream? I deserve it. You want me gone?” I lean forward, eyes locked on hers. “Then stop dreaming about me.”

She throws the blanket off like it’s made of poison.

“You arrogant, obsessive son of a bitch!”

There it is. She’s on her feet in a second, ferocious anger radiating off her like heat. She’s barefoot, hair wild, tank clinging to her damp skin from the nightmare I know just dragged her out of sleep.

And I can’t take my eyes off her.

“You don’t get to talk about what I can and can’t do!” she shouts. “You don’t get to break into my fucking apartment and act like you’re some poetic punishment I’ve been begging for!”

She’s pacing, and I let her, tracking her like prey. My heart’s pounding, jaw clenched so hard it aches. “You left me, Saxon! You used me! You disappeared! And now you think you can just—what? Sulk in corners and whisper pretty words like that makes up for it? Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Her laugh cuts through me like a razor. God, I’ve missed that venom in her voice.

“You say you’ll always be here? Like that’s supposed to make me feel safe? You’re the nightmare I wake up from, Saxon. You’re the shadow I lock my doors against!”

I shoot to my feet, and I stalk towards her. I don’t even think—I just feel . My body acts on instinct, fury and longing bleeding together until I can’t tell where one ends and the other starts.

She backs up. Her eyes flash.

I corner her against the wall, arms caging her in, breath hot between us.

“Yeah?” I growl. “Then why haven’t you thrown me out yet?”

“Fuck you.”

“Why haven’t you thrown me out, Maxine? Why haven’t you screamed?”

“I should scream now, ” she snaps, glaring at me like she could set me on fire. “You’re deranged. You’re dangerous. You’re?—”

“I’m yours, Maxine.”

The words rip out of me like a confession. Like a death sentence. Her mouth parts. Her breath stutters. I lean in.

“I’m yours,” I repeat, softer now, voice hoarse. “I tried to stay away. I tried to let you go. But you’re in my goddamn veins. I wake up with your name on my tongue and blood rushing to my brain. Every second I’m not near you, I’m burning.”

I slam my hand against the wall beside her head—not to scare her. To ground myself. To stop myself from doing something absolutely crazy.

She’s shaking now, but I know she’s not afraid of me. She’s shaking because she knows. She knows.

“You’re deranged,” she whispers, chest rising rapidly. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale.

“I don’t know how to be anything other than unhinged when it comes to you,” I whisper. “I never learned. But I’d die for you. I’d kill for you. I would burn the entire fucking world if it meant you'd feel safe for one goddamn night. ”

I drop my forehead to hers, breathing hard. My hands shake as they rest against the wall, caging her in, aching to touch her. To hold her. To worship her.

“I’m not safe,” I tell her. “I’m not sane. But I’m yours. I have always been yours.”

And in this moment—this violent, sacred silence, I think that she believes me. Not because I’ve earned it. But because she’s fire. And I’m the only one who walked into her flames and stayed.

She doesn’t say anything. She just breathes. She stares. She shakes. And then—like a storm finally touching down—she erupts. Her palms slam against my chest, not to push me away, but to punish me. To bruise. To break.

“I hate you,” she sobs. “You don’t get to do this to me. You don’t get to come back and say all the things I’ve been dying to hear like it fixes anything!”

I let her hit me. Again. And again. Her fists lose their strength. Her voice cracks.

“You disappeared,” she whispers, shattered. “I waited for you. Every night, I waited. And you never came.”

“I know,” I say, throat raw. “I know . ”

She crumples. I catch her before she hits the floor. She shoves at me weakly, but I don’t let go.

“I thought you were dead . I thought they buried you in some ditch. And part of me—part of me wished you were, because it would’ve hurt less than knowing you chose not to come back.”

That one lands where it hurts most. It tears something open in my chest so deep I don’t think I’ll ever be able to close it again.

“I didn’t have a choice,” I rasp, the words scraping up my throat like glass.

“I was in so deep, Maxine. If I broke cover—if I even breathed wrong—they would’ve killed you.

You think I wanted to walk away?” My voice cracks.

“I saw what they did to the girls they took. I watched them break them, sell them like they were nothing. I couldn’t save you if I got caught or died. ”

I take a step closer, voice low, dangerous.

“But don’t think for a second I forgot you. Your name— Maxine —it’s embedded in me. In my skin. In my fucking bones. I carried it like a weapon and a wound every single day I had to pretend you were just another case file.”

She pulls away, eyes wide and wet and angry.

“Don’t pretend like you cared!” she screams. “Don’t stand in this room and talk about carving my name into your skin when you left me!”

Tears streak her face. Mascara like warpaint. Her lip is bitten, cracked, bleeding. She looks like a goddess—ruined and raging—and I can’t do anything but ache for her.

“I hear your voice,” I whisper. “In the dark. Still. I don’t sleep without it anymore.”

She steps closer, chest rising like a storm’s trapped inside her ribs. Her hands ball into fists like she's fighting the urge to throw them at me.

“I want to hate you,” she says.

“Then hate me.”

“You left me there.”

“I know.”

“You knew what they were doing—what they’d already done.” She’s shaking now, eyes glossed over with fury and grief, a silent scream locked behind her teeth. “You broke something in me.”

I nod. “I broke something in me, too.”

Then she grabs me—fists curled in my collar—and kisses me like it’s the last thing she’ll ever allow herself to want. She tastes like vengeance. Like violence. Like war .

There’s nothing sweet in it. Nothing tender.

It’s teeth. Tongue. Fury. Grief. A goodbye masked as a claim.

A punishment disguised as a kiss. And I let her take whatever she needs.

If this is the last time she ever looks at me like I’m anything other than the man who failed her—I’ll carry it like a goddamn scar carved into my chest.

She pulls away with a gasp. Shoves me hard. I stumble. I take it.

“I can’t forgive you,” she says, voice like splinters.

“I’m not here for your forgiveness.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive you.”

“I’m still here.”

She turns away, shoulders trembling like the weight of her past just crushed her all over again.

And I do the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

I leave. Not because I want to. But because if I stay, I’ll burn her down with me.

Because I don’t know how to love her gently—not when every part of me is violence in her name.

So I walk—slow, hollow—carrying the echo of her silence like a scar.

And with every step, it feels like I’m peeling myself away from the only place I’ve ever felt real.

Because she may survive without me. But I’ll never survive her.