My haven, Caspian’s magnificent villa, was now a golden cage. Again! I was feeling so suffocated up till the point that it felt like I was losing my sanity.
Long Days merged into each other, a monochrome haze of lockdown drills and suffocating silence. You could hear a pin drop in the villa. Guards lingered nearby, their towering bodies bleeding in and out against the glass as they paced along the rim. Locks upon locks on every door. Windows screwed tight against the glass. Caspian’s security net buzzed with perpetual alarms — motion sensors, camera feeds, encoded alerts.
And still he didn’t believe it was enough. He did not want to take chances and this lead to him overthinking everything.
I could sense him unraveling.
The man who had used to touch me like I was stardust now treated me as glass — with a tender caution, a respect for fragility, an assumption of shattering. Each stroke of his fingers was a silent plea: Don’t disappear. Don’t leave me to fight this alone.
I couldn’t catch my breath under the weight of this, his over protectiveness.
I stood in the kitchen, hands on the counter, knuckles locked around a knife handle as I chopped vegetables. The smooth run of the blade on the cutting board should have been soothing, but my hands trembled as my body shook with each stroke.
I couldn’t help but think about the photograph.
That shining, implicit menace still lay in the desk drawer of Caspian. No note. No Message. Only a photo of us at the gala — snapped close up.
Someone had come so close. Close enough to touch us.
I cut through a tomato, the red juice spilling onto the wood, and I cried. A tear fell from my eye, onto the cutting board.
I hadn’t even seen him until his shadow swallowed me whole.
“Lily.”
His gruff, gentle voice whispered down my spine like cold ice. I jerked back, the knife slipping free between my fingers. A sharp trickle of blood flushed down my fingertip.
I was still trying to force words out of my lips when Caspian grabbed my hand, his fingers clenching like a vice as he turned my palm over to look at the wound. Blood bubbled up, a tiny red bead on my skin, and his jaw tightened.
He didn't say anything, but drew me over to the sink, pushing my hand under cold water.
“You have to be careful,” he muttered, strained voice.
It’s only a scratch,” I lied, attempting to sound unbothered.
He waved off what I said, grabbed a towel and bound my finger with neat care. Shaking hands held me but had an surprisingly gentle touch.
I tried to pull free but refused to let me go.
“Caspian,” I whispered, the pain in my chest threatening to devour me.
His eyes fixed on mine, a thunderstorm gathering behind them.
I hardly recognized him anymore.
His sharp, authoritative face now etched with fatigue. Purple circles clung to the edge of his lower eyelids. His cheekbones more prominent, his body taut with tension always.
He was a man standing at the edge of a cliff, ready to fall.
“You could have hurt yourself,” he interrupted, his voice shattering. “Suppose the knife slipped. Suppose—”
What if I slipped downstairs? Or on the bathtub? I yanked my hand back. “What are you planning to do, Caspian? Put bubble wraps on the floors? Take away all the sharp things?”
Those words stabbed him as painfully as a knife.
He pulled back, running his hand through his hair before I could feel the leash snap like knotted string.
“I’m doing this because you’re not safe,” he said, the words slicing me apart like glass.
“But I’m not safe, Caspian,” I strained out, the tears falling into my eyes. “Not from him. And not from you.”
His whole body stiffened, as if I’d hit him.
I should have stood up from the table. I should have stopped there. But I couldn’t. Weeks of building tension and now the dam has burst.
“I can hardly breathe with someone watching me,” I cried, gasping hugely in my ribcage. “I can’t step out of my bed without three men and a gun. I am suffocating.”
His eyes flashed with something really raw.
“Do you think I enjoy this?” he snapped, his tone low and angry. “Sitting around, watching you flinch after seeing a shadow? Having someone out there wanting to grab you from me?”
He moved in closer to me, his warm body and spring-like tension. I stepped back until I was against the wall, my heart pounding as he wrapped himself around me.
“I don’t sleep, Lily,” he panted, his voice shattered. “Whenever I close my eyes, I see you on the floor, bleeding. Or disappearing in the middle of the night. Or—”
He breathed in deeply, his chest rising and falling.
“I dream about you and dying every night,” he whispered, forehead against mine. “Every night. And I can’t help it. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
Those words drained all the substance in me.
I wrapped my arms around him, drew him into me, and he dissolved into me like a man that was unravelling.
We fell onto the floor, clung to each other tightly, our breathing ragged.
“I don’t know how to make this better,” he said, his voice shaking.
“Neither do I,” I confessed, stroking my fingers through his hair.
We stayed there so for what felt like hours — a mangled knot of arms and broken hearts, clutching one another as if the rest of the world beyond the villa didn’t matter.
But it did.
And it would only be a matter of time before it came crashing down around us once more.
Hours after the villa had finally quieted, I woke up to the sound of Caspian sobbing.
He never made a sound.
He just hugged me closer to him, his body shaking, while I kissed his forehead and let him fall apart.