Chapter 116 Tethered to Earth
The sky didn't just open up; it collapsed.
By the time I was two blocks away from the diner, the gray January clouds had bruised into a deep, sickly purple, unleashing a torrential downpour that turned the city into a blurred watercolor of neon and asphalt. The rain was ice-cold, needle-sharp as it pelted my skin, but I didn't quicken my pace. I walked with a hollow, rhythmic gait, my damp uniform clinging to my shivering frame like a second, colder skin. The fabric felt heavy, pulling at my shoulders as if it were trying to drag me down into the gutter along with the city’s filth.
I felt drenched in more than just water. I felt drenched in the grime of my parents' voices.
Theodore’s words played on a loop in my mind, a haunting melody that clashed with the high-pitched static still ringing in my ears. Nate is the only one who can keep you. He doesn’t want to fix you, Mila. He wants to burn the world down so you can finally breathe.
It should have been a comfort. It should have been the final, divine permission I needed to stop fighting the current and just let myself be carried. But as I trudged through the rising puddles, the realization of my love for Nate felt less like a life raft and more like a double-edged sword. Every time I thought about the way his eyes softened when he looked at me—that rare, molten gold look he reserved only for me—I heard my father’s oily, transactional hiss: Keep him happy. He’s our only protection.
They had tainted it. They had reached out from the darkness of their cowardice and smeared their grease all over the one thing that was supposed to be mine. It felt like a violation of the soul. If I went to him now, if I fell into his arms and told him I loved him, would it ever be pure? Or would I always wonder, in the quiet hours of the night, if I was subconsciously following my mother’s orders? Would Nate, in his infinite, protective arrogance, see my surrender as a confirmation that he had finally "bought" my heart?
The thought made me stumble, a sob catching in my throat that I forced back down. I hated them. I hated that even when they were miles away, hidden in some roach-infested hole, they still had the power to poison the very air I breathed. I was a daughter of criminals, a girl raised to see every relationship as a transaction, every kindness as a debt, and every love as a leash. I wanted to tell him. I wanted to scream those three words until my lungs burned, just to fill the cavernous emptiness inside me. But the thought that my love was now exactly what my parents wanted—a tool for their survival—made me want to retch.
I was so tired of being a pawn. I was so tired of my heart being a piece on someone else's board. I felt like I was walking through a hall of mirrors, where every reflection of my feelings was distorted by the greed of the people who shared my blood. My love for Nate should have been my sanctuary, but they had turned it into a bargaining chip. I wondered if I could ever look at him again without seeing the "Salvatore Protection" my father had gloated about.
The wind picked up, a biting northern gust that whipped my hair across my face like wet lashes. My fingers were so numb I could barely feel the strap of my bag digging into my shoulder. I felt like I was dissolving, fading into the gray mist of the city, becoming just another ghost in a town full of them. I found myself wishing I could just keep walking—past the dorm, past the diner, past the city limits—until I was somewhere where no one knew my name and no one wanted anything from me.
But then I thought of Zoe and Grace. I thought of the way they looked when they were sleeping in the Joneses' guest room, safe but displaced. I thought of the way Nate had looked at them, as if they were precious, fragile things he would kill to protect. And I realized that running wasn't an option. It never had been.
I turned the corner onto my street, my shoes squelching with every saturated step. The dorm building loomed ahead, a stark brick monolith against the weeping sky. I expected the street to be empty, as desolate as I felt, but then I saw it.
The matte black SUV was idling near the curb, its headlights cutting through the sheets of rain like two golden scythes. I knew that car. I knew the way the engine purred, a low-frequency hum that I could feel vibrating in my very teeth. It was a predator in repose, a piece of the Salvatore empire parked on a street that didn't deserve its shadow.
And then I saw him.
Nate wasn't inside the car, sheltered and dry. He was standing on the sidewalk, right in front of the steps where he had laid his soul bare four days ago. He didn't have an umbrella. He wasn't wearing a coat. His white button-down shirt was translucent, plastered to his chest and shoulders by the deluge, and his dark hair was swept back, dripping water down a face that looked like it had been carved out of sheer, unadulterated grief.
He looked wrecked.
The man who controlled empires, the man who moved through the world with the untouchable, lethal grace of a god, looked like he was barely holding onto the earth. His shoulders were hunched against the cold, his jaw set in a jagged, painful line, and his eyes—even through the blur of the rain—were fixed on the entrance of the building with a desperate, haunting vigil. He wasn't a billionaire in that moment; he wasn't a Salvatore. He was just a man who had lost the only thing that made him feel human.
He looked exactly the way I felt: hollow, haunted, and waiting for the end of the world. He looked like he had been standing there for hours, anchored to the spot by the sheer weight of his regret.
I froze ten feet away from him, the rain blurring my vision until he looked like a figure from a dream. My heart, which I thought had finally gone numb under the weight of my parents' betrayal, gave a violent, agonizing thud against my ribs. In that moment, the voices of my parents faded. The demands, the debts, and the "protection" didn't matter. There was only the man in the rain, and the girl who was finally, terrifyingly, realizing she couldn't breathe without him.
Nate turned his head, his gaze sweeping the street with a frantic energy until it landed on me. For a heartbeat, neither of us moved. We just stood there in the storm, two broken things recognizing the only person who could put the pieces back together.