Page 131 of Fractured Devotion
And that, more than anything, fractures something in my chest.
“I wanted you,” I say, my voice brittle. “Even though I had an idea of what you were. Even when I suspected. What does that make me?”
His answer comes too quickly. “Mine.”
I flinch. “No,” I whisper. “It makes me compromised.”
His breath catches, but he doesn’t reach for me. He knows better now.
I press my palm flat to the glass, and something inside me folds inwards, bitter and hollow.
“I don’t know what’s real anymore,” I whisper.
“I do,” he says, stepping close enough that I feel his shadow behind me.
“You’re not allowed to answer that,” I tell him.
The window fogs slightly under my breath.
Outside, the sun is just beginning to rise.
And I realize I haven’t slept in over thirty hours.
I’m running on code and resentment and ghosts.
And the worst part?
I’m still not ready to stop.
Kade stays motionless, his breath too shallow to stir the air. I can feel him there, a presence at my back, heavy with an unspoken intensity, radiating intensity he won’t name out loud.
I turn around. His eyes are waiting for me, steady and sharp.
“I’m not done with this,” I say.
“I never thought you were.”
I take a step closer. “You didn’t protect me. You didn’t warn me. You let me walk into a memory designed to ruin me.”
He inclines his head. “You survived it.”
“You don’t get credit for my survival,” I say coldly.
“No,” he says. “But I saw it. All of it. The way you looked at that screen, and the way you didn’t blink. You didn’t collapse.”
“Not in front of you.”
His jaw tightens.
I walk past him unhurried and with purpose, forcing him to pivot and follow my movement. When I reach the center of the office, I stop and turn. “You knew exactly what that footage would do to me.”
“I had a theory,” he says.
“Then why not stop it?”
“Because some fractures aren’t accidents. They’re the start of new structures.”
“You wanted me broken,” I say.
