I awoke to the sound of heavy rain falling, disrupting my sleep.
It created a gentle rhythm on the villa windows, almost harmonic, easing the chaotic boom of water surging off sea cliffs a hundred feet or so below. Darkness spread across walls, siphoned light through draperies to throw a cloak of shadows across the room. I was rigid as bone, my muscles stretched as tightly as wires on some stringed instrument, as if last night I slept clenched up in fear and I rigid even at that moment.
And I hadn’t slept alone. I was very certain about that.
I sat up and saw Caspian seated in the lone armchair in the room, his elbows on his knees, his hands on his handsome but worried face. He did not look like someone that had slept at all He was observing me keenly — sleepy-eyed with sleep deprivation, they were pale and dark but acutely incisive. The same attire still gripped around his torso as he’d slept in — crumpled, wrinkled, a small scab of dried blood on one sleeve where he’d nicked himself.
He hadn't slept at all, it was clearly obvious.
“ You sat there the entire night through?” I let out a breath, my own voice barely above a whisper.
He didn’t answer for a second as he was deep in thoughts. He just looked at me, the look in his eyes unreadable, before he at last scratched the back of one hand up over his cheek and let out a heavy sigh like someone who had just performed a strenuous task.
“You were twitching like crazy,” he managed to muster, his own voice low.
“I did not want you to be left alone all by yourself .”
I rested back against the headboard, winced as my injured foot hit it. I still recall the incident that happened days back— the dangerous intruder, the blood, Caspian almost killing him without hesitation. Everything happening so fast.
I burrowed further into the blanket, attempting to be motionless and fell warm.
“Did they figure out how he got in?” I asked.
Caspian’s face darkened. “He cut through the security system. Must have had the codes.”
I swallowed hard. “Which means someone on the inside gave them to him.”
He nodded, a muscle ticking in his temple. “I’ve already fired the entire security team. New men will be here by the afternoon.”
I blinked at him. “You can’t just do that, those guys have families to feed. You don’t even know which one of them did it. Why sack all?”
“I don’t care to be honest” he snarled, and the venom in his words shocked me. He cursed under his breath, running his hand over his hair. "I won't risk your life, Lily. Not now Not ever.”
The room stretched out before us, quiet, but the tension that flowed between us vibrating like a live wire. Caspian leaned back in the chair, rubbing his eyes, but the burden on his shoulders remained. He looked tired and frustrated. As if the thread of control which he so easily ever wore was at last starting to unravel before his very eyes.
You can’t keep me locked up this way,” I said, standing to break the silence that had lingered for too long, “You can’t lock me away and think that’s going to keep me safe.”
Caspian’s eyes pinned me, icy and unforgiving. “I can. And I will.”
I tossed my head back, fury churning inside me. “That’s not living, Caspian. That’s surviving as a coward. And I can’t — I can’t exist like that.”.
He stood up from the chair, scratching the floor with it, and walked to the window. He stood there, rigid, fingers jammed into glass of the window, shoulders twisted, staring out into the rain as if the answers to his problems was out there.
“If I lose you.” His voice broke. “If anything happens to you because of me —”
It won’t be your fault,” I argued in earnest. “It’ll be the fault of those who’re attempting to take everything you. You don’t deserve this things that are happening to you, Caspian, no one does. You didn’t choose this. You just happened to be unfortunately surrounded by evil people with hate in their heart.”
He turned and looked at me then, and what was written on his face stole my breath.
“I chose you.”
Each and every word laced with something raw and uncontrollable. “I made that decision when I brought you into my world, realizing what it would cost.”
My heart shattered as he said those words.
I threw the blanket on the marble floor and stamped on my throbbing foot. It stung so bad , but I didn’t care about that, I limped the entire way across the room to stand in front of him. The tension coming off of him was suffocating, but I put my hand on him anyway, palm on his chest, stroking it gently as if I didn’t want him to fall apart.
His heart felt like a storm brewing in the depths of my hand.
“I don’t regret choosing you. I don’t regret the time we have spent together.” He panted, his voice shaking. “But if anything happens to you, Lily… if they take you away from me…”
His voice trembled and he hid his eyes as if it was too harsh for him even to utter the words.
“I don’t think I would be able to go on in the world.”
The confession broke something inside me and it made me feel down.
I rubbed my hand against his jaw, pressing his head into mine so that his forehead wrinkled against mine. I felt his pulse as I moved closer. His skin was clammy and cold with sweat, and his body shuddered with almost held-back emotion. It was almost as if he was struggling to let it all out.
“You’re not going to lose me. I promise you that.” I told him. “I’m right here.”
His fingers wrapped into my shirt, feeling every fabric in it, and I felt the way he was clenching his teeth — as if he was fighting something unpleasant back, something too wild to let out. As if he were too scared to touch me the way he had wanted to.
So I touched him first to make him feel at ease.
I kissed him slow and slow, and his hold shattered like a dam. I felt him in a way I hadn’t felt before and it was a good sensation.
Caspian held me pinned against him, his starving, famished lips, and I melted into it. Into him. Into the gentle stroke of his fingers through my hair, the gentleness with which he was holding me, a feather, suspended between us as we drifted toward the bed like he couldn’t bear to release me for a single second. He held on to me tightly as if he thought if he left me, I would suddenly disappear.
We collapsed on the mattress in a knot of limbs, and he loomed over me, eyes feral, chest shuddering.
He stared at me for what felt like an eternity, as if he was thinking of what to say in the moment.
“Tell me you are mine Lily, I need to hear you say it” he gritted, voice raw.
I combed his hair with my fingers, forcing his mouth back to mine. “I have always been yours Caspian and I am not going anywhere.”
The tempest Within him dissolved like butter on a hot surface.
Caspian kissed me as though he was choking and I the sole air in all the universe. His hands probed each centimeter of me, and I wrapped myself around him with the same urgency, hunger to feel his skin, his pulse, the pulse of life below the surface of all flames and devastation.
We did not say a word.
We did not have to.
Because at that time, we weren’t fighting to stay together as much as we were fighting to keep in mind that we still both existed.
And that was sufficient for now.