52

EZRA

I can feel her.

Not just in the way a man feels when he's in love—this isn’t that kind of soft. I don't even know what love is!

This… this is madness. This is blood- warmth- twisting- in- my- veins kind of knowing.

It’s cell-deep.

Like my bones learned her name before my mouth ever said it.

When she's close, I knew it even before I heard the click of her heels down the hall like a countdown to either salvation or total destruction.

I should leave.

But I didn’t.

I can’t.

She’s been avoiding me, and it’s driving me out of my mind.

She shuts the door before I can speak.

She walks faster when she senses me near.

She laughs with Nathan.

Nathan.

The name alone makes something in my chest grow fangs.

She laughs differently with him.

Softer. Like her lungs trust him. Like he’s safe.

But I want to be her safe.

I want to be the arms she falls into, not the one she flees.

I want to unclip her armor and kiss the scars underneath.

Fuck.

She’s made of wildfire and sugar and grief and sharp edges.

She’s poetry I was never taught to read, and still—I try.

And now?

I watch her walk past me like I’m nothing but smoke from a match she regrets striking.

I stare at her closed office door.

I don’t know when this started.

This obsession.

But I think it all worsened that moment when I dipped my fangs in her flesh while she throbs around my cock from her climax. I'd shrugged it off. But now…

Something is wrong.

Terribly.

This… need.

It’s sick.

I lean against her closed door and puff out a breath.

I think about the other night—when I stood outside her house like some heartbroken ghoul.

I could feel her on the other side.

Leaning against that door while n leaned against the other side.

Or how I've been fake-sleeping outside her apartment in my car just to listen to her heartbeat and breath when she's asleep.

She doesn’t get it.

Doesn’t know I’d crawl through fire for her.

Doesn’t know I already have.

And now, every time I close my eyes, all I see is her back pressed against that wall, whispering for me to go away.

It should’ve made me stop.

It didn’t.

I showed up again today. Stood outside her office like I’ve forgotten how to function without her proximity.

She looked at me like I’m her worst mistake.

And maybe I am.

But she’s mine, too.

Pathetic.

Begging isn’t me.

I don’t beg.

Until her.

I know something’s wrong.

It’s more than a feeling—it’s instinct, primal and raw, sitting under my skin like a fever.

But I don’t know what to do with it.

Should I call Malik?

Or Lucien.

Or even Cassien. But I know Cassien. I know he'll report to the Vampire council if I confirm his suspicion. Moreover, I’ve been dodging like he’s a loaded gun pointed at all the truths I don’t want to face.

Because if I talk to him, he’ll see it.

He will see how I’m falling.

How she’s undoing me, thread by thread.

My fingers twitch at my sides with the need to call one of them. Text. But I do nothing.

Instead, I just lean.

I don’t even realize how long I’ve been standing there until the hallway goes quiet—too quiet.

The kind of quiet that happens when the whole world clocks out and you’re the only fool left behind.

The electronic lights hum above, painting the hallway in this washed-out blue.

She’s gone now, perfume already faded in the air.

God. I’ve become something she has to escape.

I push away from the door. My limbs are heavy, movements sluggish like my body doesn’t want to leave where she last was.

I walk down the corridor back to my office.

Back to the one place that still smells faintly like her perfume because she yelled at me here once and I never opened the windows again.

My car keys sit on the table like they’ve been waiting for me to accept what I already know.

I’m not sleeping tonight. Or even resting my eyes.

Not without her heartbeat in the world to soothe the ache in mine.

Because hers is my lullaby.

The only sound that makes the world stop spinning too fast.

I grip the key tighter.

I’m going to her.

Even if going to her means I'm sleeping outside her house, inside my car.

I just need to hear her.

To be near her.

Just need to know she’s breathing.

Just like I always do every night.