Got you

Got you
I saw the car before Lydia even finished her sentence. A black sedan pulled up at the mouth of the driveway, rolling in too slowly for my liking. The headlights cut across the front lawn and I felt something inside me snap into a razor point.

Alex.

And Camilla.

He had the audacity to bring her here like this. The audacity to breathe in my city after touching her. My grip on the door handle tightened until I nearly tore it off as I got out of the car.

Lydia opened her door slower, calling after me, “Stephano. Slow down. Slow down.”

I did not hear her. My blood was pounding in my ears. My jaw ached from how hard I was clenching it. The entire world narrowed into one single target. Alex stepped out of the driver’s side, shaky, pale as paper. Camilla climbed out on the passenger’s side. Her legs wobbled. Her eyes looked glassy. She looked terrified and too fragile and too damn small.

The sight of her made something in my chest implode.

I moved. Power walked straight toward them. Lydia kept talking behind me, but her voice faded into nothing.

Alex raised his hands the moment he saw my face. “Stephano, wait. Just listen. Please. I swear to God I did not…”

I did not let him finish. I reached him in three strides and swung. My fist crashed into his jaw with a crack that echoed across the driveway. His head snapped sideways and his body went down hard on the gravel.

Camilla let out a sharp, terrified yelp. “Stephano!”

I barely heard her.

I dropped to one knee, grabbed Alex by the collar before he could roll away, and hit him again. And again. And again. My knuckles connected with bone, cartilage, skin. The impact vibrated up my arm with every punch.

A fourth blow landed. Then a fifth. I tasted my own rage in the back of my throat.

Alex’s lip split. Blood smeared across his cheek. His arms lifted weakly in a pathetic attempt to shield himself.

Lydia’s heels clicked rapidly across the ground. “Stephano. Stop. You are going to beat him to death.”

I ignored her.

I grabbed him by the shirt and pulled his face inches from mine. He was groaning, blood dripping onto the pavement.

My voice came out low and venomous. “If you ever lay a finger on her again, even by accident, I will rip your head off with my bare hands. Do you understand me.”

Alex made a shaking sound that might have been a yes.

I shoved him back, disgusted with the sight of him.

Behind me, Camilla started sobbing.

“That is enough,” Lydia insisted sharply. “Stephano, get up. You proved your point.”

I finally stood, chest heaving. My fists throbbed. The skin over my knuckles was split open. I wiped the blood on my suit pants and turned to Camilla.

The moment her eyes met mine, she ran.

Not away.

Straight into me.

She collided with my chest so hard I had to steady her. Her arms wrapped around me, clutching at my shirt. Her face buried itself into my neck. Her whole body shook as she sobbed, breathless, broken cries tearing out of her.

I wrapped my arms around her immediately, tightening them, pulling her in until there was no space between us. My chin dropped onto the top of her head.

“Hey,” I whispered, my voice rough. “You are safe now. I have you.”

She cried harder. I lifted her slightly off the ground as she clung to me like she would drown if she let go.

Behind us, Lydia sighed heavily. “Well. That is one way to reunite.”

I ignored her completely. Camilla’s body shook in my arms like something fragile, something breakable, something that had been manhandled by the world until it forgot how to breathe.

And I…

God help me…

I held her like she was the only thing in existence that mattered.

She was sobbing, not crying, not sniffling. Her fingers clutched the lapels of my jacket with a desperation that carved straight through my ribs. She wasn’t even conscious enough to know she was digging her nails into me. Her face was buried against my neck, hot tears soaking into my shirt, her entire body folding into mine like she was trying to crawl inside my chest.

And I… I was frozen, not physically. Physically, I was moving on instinct, tightening my grip around her, dragging my palm up and down her back, pressing my lips to her hair, whispering things I didn’t even recognize as my own voice. But inside my mind? I was frozen. Staring straight at a feeling I had never, not once in twenty-six goddamned years, felt before. Fear. It was pure, unfiltered, bone-deep fear. The kind that breaks you. The kind that rips your lungs open.

The kind that makes you want to beg for mercy even though you don’t know who you’re begging. I didn’t know what the hell was happening.

I didn’t know why my throat felt tight or why my pulse was hammering so hard I could hear it. I couldn't tell why my hands wouldn’t stop shaking against her spine.

Why I couldn’t let go?

I swallowed hard, burying my face in her hair.

She smelled like the outside. Like fear.Like sweat.

Like she had been somewhere I couldn’t reach her. And the thought, the reality, that for hours, she had been somewhere I couldn’t reach her,

somewhere I couldn’t protect her, somewhere she was alone nearly took my knees out from under me.

“Shh. Camilla. Stop shaking, I’ve got you,” I whispered, but it came out hoarse. Broken. “You’re here. You’re with me. You’re safe.”

Safe. Safe with me.

She sobbed harder, clinging to me like a child clinging to the last piece of shelter in a storm.

Her voice cracked out of her throat in pieces.

“S…Stephano… I…I thought… I thought…”

“I know,” I murmured into her hair, my grip tightening. “I know. I know. I’m here.”

And even as I said it, my chest constricted again. I had never moved so fast in my life. Never gone that still. Never come that close to killing a man with my bare hands, but none of that compared to what I felt now. She trembled harder, trying to speak, her breaths breaking, uneven, panicked.

“I… I wanted to leave.  I didn’t want…I thought you’d… I thought…”

My arms locked tighter around her.

“Don’t,” I whispered sharply into her neck. “Don’t say it.”

I felt her flinch, her nails scraping lightly against my chest, but I couldn’t help it.

I didn’t want to hear the word. Not now. Not when I was holding her, alive, warm, breathing.

I didn’t want to hear “leave.”

I didn’t want to hear “run.”

I didn’t want to hear anything that reminded me that hours ago, she had been gone.

Camilla.

My Camilla.

I closed my eyes, swallowing against a tightening in my throat that I refused to acknowledge. Somewhere in the chaos of the last twenty-four hours, something had shifted. Something difficult for me to comprehend. Because when I got the call, when I found out she was missing, the world didn’t just tilt.

It collapsed.

What was this feeling?

Why did it feel like my chest was ripped open?

Why did I care this much?

Why was I terrified, terrified, of losing her?

I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything. I only knew she was in my arms now, sobbing like she was unraveling at the seams. And I was holding her like a man who had been dead until the moment he felt her pulse against his. I buried my face deeper into her hair, inhaling her like she was oxygen.

“I’ve got you,” I whispered again, quieter this time.

More for me than for her.

I wasn’t scared because she had been taken. I was scared because I had almost lost her. And I realized that was something I didn’t know how to survive.