Drowning

Drowning

“I hate you. So much. And I want you to hold me anyway.”

I couldn’t breathe in my own house.

Every hallway felt like it was watching me. Every portrait was a threat.

So I poured myself a drink.

Then another.

And another.

I stopped counting after the third glass. Somewhere between the hallway and my mother’s old room, I stopped pretending I was in control.

The door creaked open like it had been waiting for me.

Dust danced in the morning light spilling through the cracked curtains. Her perfume still lingered faintly—soft and warm, like lavender and rain. I hated it for surviving when she didn’t.

I stood in the middle of the room and stared at her untouched vanity. Her robes still hanging on the side of the armoire. The jewelry box she never let the maids touch.

And then I lost it.

The glass in my hand went flying first—shattered against the wall like the inside of my chest. I ripped open drawers. Tore the silk sheets from the bed. Knocked over the photo frame with the only picture of the three of us—me, her, and a man who never deserved to be called my father.

I was sobbing by the time I hit the floor. Knees to cold wood. Hands over my mouth to muffle the kind of sound that doesn’t belong to anyone sane.

Footsteps behind me. I didn’t turn.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I said.

The silence told me it was Silas.

“You were declared dead,” I whispered, eyes burning. “Do you know that?”

He didn’t speak. But I felt him. Closer than he should be. Close enough to feel the weight of the silence between us.

“I hate you,” I said. Voice trembling. “So much. I hate you for staying away. For leaving me. For lying. For everything.”

My fists hit the floor.

“And I want you to hold me anyway.”

I felt him sink down behind me. Slowly. Carefully. His arms didn’t wrap around me all at once. Just his hand—warm, hesitant—on my back. And when I didn’t pull away, he pulled me in.

He didn’t say a word.

He just held me while I broke.

Time passed. I don’t know how much. It could’ve been minutes or hours. The light shifted in the windows, and my breath slowed just enough to let the ache settle.

I pulled away first. Wiped my face. Reached for the bottom drawer of my mother’s desk—one I hadn’t touched in years.

There was a false panel inside. I’d known it since I was sixteen.

And behind it was the letter.

Her handwriting was shaky but still hers. The ink faded but fierce.

I unfolded it slowly, the weight of it heavier than any file Fiora had ever handed me.

I read in silence. Every line a wound.

Every line a truth I hadn’t been ready to see.
“My beautiful girl,

If you’re reading this, I’m already gone. But I know you. I know your anger. Your fire. Your grief. You will want revenge. You will blame him.”

“I know you love him. That’s why this will hurt more than anything else.”

“He didn’t kill me, Aria. He tried to save me. But I wouldn’t let him.”

“Some things are not meant to be saved. I chose this. To give you a chance. To give you him.”

“Don’t waste it.”

“And when it breaks you… because it will…

Forgive him. Even if he can’t forgive himself.”
My hand dropped.

The letter fell to the floor.

And for the first time in years, I felt something close to surrender.

I turned to Silas, tears catching the edge of my lashes, and asked:

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

His voice cracked.

“Because I wanted you to hate me,” he said. “It was easier than watching you mourn.”

I leaned into him again—fierce and fragile all at once.

“I did mourn,” I whispered. “For both of you.”

And when he kissed my forehead, it didn’t fix anything.

But it made breathing just a little easier.

That night, the silence felt different.

Not the kind that suffocates — but the kind that waits.

I lay in my bed, half-dressed in yesterday’s clothes, the letter from my mother still folded beneath my pillow. The house was quiet. Too quiet. Like it knew something had shifted in me. Like it was waiting to see what I’d become.

My door creaked open just past midnight.

I didn’t flinch.

I knew his footsteps. Even in the dark.

I didn’t turn. Didn’t speak. I just listened to the rustle of his coat being set on the chair. The dull thud of his gun on the nightstand. The faint creak of the mattress as his weight dipped behind me.

He didn’t say anything.

He just lay there — not touching me, not daring to cross whatever invisible line we’d drawn in blood and grief.

I stared at the wall.

The moonlight cut across the edge of my room, silver against the dark. I watched it like it might give me the strength to open my mouth. To ask the one thing I swore I never would.

And still, I asked it.

“Did you ever love me?” My voice came out quieter than I meant. Almost scared. Almost broken.

Silas didn’t move.

Seconds passed. Maybe longer.

Then finally—his breath caught.

And when he answered, I felt the tremble in his voice before I heard it.

“I never stopped.”

The air left my lungs.

I turned over slowly to face him. My fingers curled between us, just barely grazing the sheet between our bodies.

His eyes were open. Fixed on the ceiling like he was afraid to look at me.

But when I didn’t look away, he finally turned his head.

Moonlight carved across the sharp edge of his jaw, the hollow beneath his cheekbone. But his eyes—they were soft. Unarmed.

Like all the walls he spent years building had finally cracked open.

“You left me,” I whispered. “I needed you.”

“I never left,” he said quietly. “I just couldn’t come back the way I wanted to.”

“You should’ve tried harder.”

He didn’t argue.

He didn’t defend himself.

He just nodded. Like he knew. Like he agreed. Like he’d lived with the guilt every second I had.

I reached up slowly, fingers brushing the edge of his cheek. He didn’t pull away. His eyes fluttered shut for just a second — like the contact hurt more than a bullet.

“I lost everything,” I said, voice shaking. “And I kept thinking… if you’d just stayed, maybe it wouldn’t have felt so empty.”

Silas exhaled hard — a sound too close to a sob.

“I wanted to stay,” he said. “God, Aria, I wanted to stay so badly. But your mother… Vittorio… everything was collapsing, and I was already halfway buried.”

“You let me think you didn’t care.”

“I thought it would keep you alive.”

I hated how much sense that made.

I hated how he still broke me — even while holding my pieces together.

I moved closer. Just an inch. Just enough for our foreheads to touch.

“I don’t need you to protect me anymore,” I whispered. “I just need you to choose me.”

His breath hitched.

“I did,” he said. “The day I let the world hate me just to keep you breathing.”

He didn’t touch me.

He just lay there, forehead to mine, like we were trying to memorize the way our hearts used to beat before all of this.

And for once, the silence wasn’t cruel.

It was the only thing left that understood us.

I didn’t know what would happen tomorrow. I didn’t know if either of us would survive the storm we were standing in.

But for that moment, I let myself close my eyes.

And for the first time in years—I didn’t feel alone.