Page 35 of Beautifully Damned
“Is that what you think I am?” he asks. “Human?”
“I think you could be.”
“Then you’re even more naïve than I thought.”
?Chapter XXII?
Ayla
I think I’m losing it.
Because instead of flinching when I hear the door open, I sit straighter. I glance at the clock, wondering if it’s him. I find myself holding my breath for the sound of his boots against the tile. I’ve officially cracked.
Stockholm syndrome is supposed to feel like delusion: something you’re too far gone to notice. But I’m fully aware, and I’m still here, searching for signs, watching him the way some people watch storms, knowing they can destroy you, but needing to witness the chaos anyway.
He’s like a puzzle. Dangerous, impossible, infuriating. But something in me wants to solve him. It’s stupid. Maybe it’s this deep-rooted belief I’ve always had, that even the worst people were once good. That something made them this way, and if you peel back the right layer, you’ll find the part of them that’s still salvageable.
Not that it matters. When all this ends, it ends. He’ll return me, and this strange intimacy we’ve been building will disappear. We’ll go back to who we were before. Him, the powerful man no one crosses. Me, the memory.
I try not to dwell on the sadness that slips into my chest. I’ve always been like this. Loving things I shouldn’t. Romanticizing ruin. Getting attached to things I should run from. People are not meant to be “fixed”. They are what they are. But I still look at Roman like maybe… maybe there’s something left in him worth saving.
But the truth is that I’m the one who needs saving. From myself.
Elena whispered something in my ear this morning as if it were a sin. “October twentieth,” she said, before leaving me alone in the kitchen with my thoughts and a ball of guilt curdling in my stomach. It’s his birthday today.
I baked a stupid cake that’s sitting in the fridge, crammed behind a jar of olives and a half-eaten sandwich. It’s pathetic—small, lopsided, the frosting already cracking along the edges. I used the only mix I could find in the pantry and scoured every drawer like a maniac until I found two old candles. One’s bent. The other is a Christmas tree.
What kind of hostage bakes her captor a birthday cake? What kind of idiot imagines him as a child, staring at an empty table year after year, with no gifts and no candles?
And if I show him the cake—I’ll die on the spot if he looks at me with that blank face and says nothing.
Hours pass. He’s back now. Showered, hair still damp, dressed in his usual black that swallows the light. We have dinner in near silence, and I vanish into the kitchen afterward, standing frozen in front of the open fridge, staring at the saddest cake I have ever seen in my life. Then the fridge door shuts behind me.
“Good god,” I mutter, my heart pounding. I press my back to the fridge, stretching my arms out wide. “Fridge’s empty.”
“Move.” Roman hisses.
“No.”
“You’re blocking it.”
“Nothing for you in here. I mean it.”
He takes a step forward, and I grip the fridge handle behind me.
“I swear to God, if you open it, you’re gonna wish you hadn’t.”
He lifts one arm, and my arms drop on instinct. I don’t think I can handle one more touch from him without incinerating.
I lose the fight, and he opens the fridge. His eyes land on the plate with the sad cake and the two ridiculous candles: a crooked red Christmas tree and a melted yellow swirl.
“It’s dumb, I know. A stupid thing. I was going to throw it out.” I reach to take it from him, but he holds it closer to him, refusing to hand it over. He shuts the fridge door and walks past me to the counter, placing it down.
He drags the stool out with a screech that makes me flinch, then sits. Elbows on his knees. Just… staring at the cake.
“The candles aren’t lit,” he says.
“I… couldn’t find a lighter.”
