The villa was too still.
The Security team had come and gone, locking down the estate, double-checking every door, every window, every blind. But nothing of that cleared away the smothering silence, the feeling that the house wasn't breathing.
I sat facing the window, knees to clenched chest, looking over to the edge outside as rain streaked down the glass window in beautiful trembling drops. Outside the window, there was a storm that mirrored the storm within me— wild, merciless, relentless.
Caspian hadn't moved out of the room since the incident . He paced, his jaw locked, fists curling and uncurling at his hips like he was waiting for something to break. His black shirt stuck to his sweat-dampened torso, still rumpled and unusual— blood, sweat, and the vestiges of shredded fury.
I was supposed to feel safe with him watching over me like this. But I didn't.
Because we had never been so far apart.
"You need to rest," I whispered, my voice small string in the vast expanse of the room's silence.
Caspian kept going. Didn't even look my way.
"I'm okay," he muttered. the roughness in his voice betrayed his emotions.
He wasn't okay. Neither of us were.
I pressed my head to my knees, my heart a throbbing pain of grief. My foot twitched where the bandage wrapped it, but the pain wasn't as much as the one in my heart that was making it to flutter.
I wished he would come to me. I wished he would sit with me, hold my hand, speak so that I might understand the nightmare would soon be ended. I wished he would tell me everything was over and I didn't have to worry anymore.
But he would not.
For Caspian only knew one thing. Fighting . And when he didn't have the chance to do that, he closed his rage in.
I bit my lip, swallowing what came up in my throat.
"I cannot breathe this way," I murmured, words coming out before I had the chance to swallow them.
He stiffened.
Spun around.
His eyes burned into me — dark, shattered, crazed with something I could not name.
"What did you say?"
I lifted my head, my heart beating faster than normal. "I told you I can't breathe." I managed unsteadily. "I can't breathe if you won't talk to me. If you're shutting me out."
Caspian's jaw clenched with the twitch of the muscle.
"I'm keeping you safe."
"By not talking to me?" I shook my head, blinking frantically to clear my eyes of tears. "I'm drowning, Caspian. You're here but not here."
He crossed the room in three strides, his presence towered over me.
"I don't have a choice," he growled low and lethal. "The moment I dropped my guard, you were almost killed."
I flinched.
He swore under his breath, dragging his fingers through his face.
"I can't—" His voice trembled, and he stumbled back, punching his fists into the wall. His shoulders heaved, his body heavy with tension. "I can't lose you, Lily."
The confession broke something in me.
I pulled myself up, burning pain stabbing through my bruised foot, but I did not feel it. I closed the distance between us and wrapped myself around him, my face to his back.
He did not stir.
And then he broke down.
His fingers tightened on my hands, holding me there as his head fell. His body convulsed, infection of fear despair, poison spreading inward.
"I cannot keep you safe Lily" he struggled to say. "Nothing I do is ever enough."
I turned him around and traced his face with my fingers.
His eyes were a storm — untamed, uncontrollable seas of regret and sorrow.
"You don't have to be the only one who's scared," I struggled to say, shaking. "I'm scared, Caspian. But you cannot save me by imprisoning me. I will not live that."
"You don't understand," Caspian sighed, rubbing my back gently as he said this.
He held on to me tightly, his arm around the back of my neck, his mouth on my temple like he was trying to draw me in.
"I don't know how," he growled, his voice gravelly. "I don't know how to love someone without destroying them."
My heart was being ripped in half.
"You're not destroying me," I panted. "You're the only I am still breathing right now."
He pulled me back into him again, then held me away from him far enough to look at me in the eyes. His eyes dropped to my lips, and in that moment I didn't have so much as a second of doubt that he was going to kiss me.
He didn't.
He pressed his face into mine, his chest heaving with breath as he hugged hard arms around me, as though he was afraid to lose me.
"I'm going to fix this mess no matter what it takes," he vowed, voice a harsh promise. "We are going to make it through this, Lily. And then I'm going to give you the life you deserve."
I shook my head vigorously, tears streaming down my cheeks as I struggled to contain my emotions.
"I don't want the life you think I deserve," I gasped, voice breaking. "I just want you."
Caspian's entire body strained, his hands weakening to a thread. He framed my face in his hands and with his hands, gently brushed away tears, his emotion were all over the place.
"You already have me," he growled. "You've had me since the moment I first laid eyes on you."
And this time, he kissed me.
Not softly.
Not carefully.
It was a starving kiss — a kiss that tore through all the wreckage we'd stacked between us and left bare, ravenous hunger. His lips descended on mine, and I could taste my own tears on my mouth for salt and the bitter taste of despair.
His fists were knotted in my hair, his chest against mine to the wall, as though he sought to meld us together, to crawl so far within me that even fear could not find us.
I held on to him, kissed him as though he was the only sanity in a world that still raged around me.
And the two of us finally let go, gasping together.
Caspian buried his face in mine, forehead to face, cheek to jawline, and pulled me into the heat of his chest.
"I'm never letting you go," he swore.
I closed my eyes and gripped him.
Because I didn't want him to.
Even if it destroyed us both in the process.