The War Between Us의 모든 챕터: 챕터 71 - 챕터 80

Milena DragovicI watched Alexander's body move toward the intruder. Muscles coiling, eyes narrowing to predatory slits. Time fractured. His first strike cracked against bone. The second blow landed before the first's echo died, knuckles driving into soft tissue. The man’s stomach folded, and he stumbled back. Alexander followed. No hesitation. A kick to the knee. The snap echoed. The man howled. Alexander grabbed his shirt, pulled him forward into a headbutt. Blood sprayed. The man fell. Not down yet. Alexander stomped on his ribs. Once. Twice. The intruder twisted away, attempted escape on hands and knees. Alexander caught his ankle, dragged him back, dropped an elbow into his spine like it was meant to be an execution. The man's scream cut short.The man struggled upward, but Alexander's kick sent his knees bending at an impossible angle, his arms windmilling desperately through empty space, fingers splayed and grasping at nothing but the rushing air between his plummeting form an

Alecander Li ChenAND THERE IT WAS.Milena against the desk, crumpled where the fight left her. Head bowed, hair falling loose across her face, blood painting from her waist down. A slash of crimson, as if someone had tried to erase her from the world in one cut but failed. The stain ran in a line from her ribs to the edge of the desk, then dripped in fat, sullen drops to the floor, pooling on the wood with a speed that made me want to reverse time.Across the office, the man who’d touched her lay sprawled, one arm twisted under his back at an impossible angle. Mouth ajar, blood leaking from his nostril. He made a wet, animal sound once, and then nothing.I didn't look at him again. He was a problem solved; she was a problem alive.All I heard was the impossible speed of my own heart.Her hands were pressed to her side. Wrong pressure. Wrong angle. She was trying to compensate for the blood loss, but her fingers were slipping.I was on my knees before I realized I’d moved.“Milena.”H

Milena DragovicThe room had gone quiet in a way that didn’t feel peaceful.Not relief. Not safety.Just aftermath.The kind that settles after violence but before truth.Alexander hadn’t moved far from the bed. He stood close enough to intervene, far enough to pretend he wasn’t hovering. Watching. Measuring.I looked at him, searching for signs: of pity, of contempt, of shared understanding. He gave me nothing. His expression was so controlled it almost looped back around to vulnerable. I wanted to ask him if he’d ever loved anyone, if he’d ever been loved in return, but the words stuck in the back of my throat like a pill too big to swallow. I settled for the next best thing, “Why did you stay?”He didn’t move, not even to breathe. “What do you mean?”“I mean you could have left, after I was safe. You could have called an ambulance, or Ray, or anyone. But you didn’t. You sat here.”He blinked, “You needed someone to watch over you.”That answer infuriated me. “I’m not a child.”“No,

Milena DragovicThe room felt smaller now, ceilings lowering, walls inching closer. I tried to imagine who would bother tailing a random sports psychologist like me, someone who’d done everything possible to be invisible. I thought about my father and his wide world of connections.I stepped forward, closing the last bit of distance until we were almost chest to chest. I turned the question over in my mind, once, twice, letting it grind at old scar tissue.“If this is about my father…” I started, but he cut me off.“It’s not about your father,” he said, and the denial was so soft, so at odds with his usual concussive certainty, that it nearly sounded like an apology.Something dangerous and unfamiliar sat behind the line of his jaw, as if he was holding back.“Then what?” I demanded, my voice scraping against the silence until it was almost hoarse. “What does that mean?”He hesitated. I saw now that he would always hold off, always pause for risk before every word, as if the very act

Alexander Li ChenI turned the handle and stepped inside.The first thing I checked wasn’t her.It was the nightstand. The phone wasn’t where I’d left it.Not by much. But enough.I didn’t smile, but the tension in my chest eased a notch, the way it does when a puzzle snaps crisply into its next configuration. She’d made the call. She’d taken the opportunity.Then I looked at her.She was sitting upright, shoulders squared like defiance alone could hold her together. Pale. Stubborn. Watching me the way people watch storms. Calculating damage before it lands.“Did you rest?” I asked. My voice was neutral.“Yes,” she said.She was a better liar than most. But the dilation of her pupils, the microtremor in her left hand, the way her right thumb pressed hard against her index finger. These were all not tells of sleep.“You talked to someone,” I said, picking up her phone and scanning the lock screen. Not a question. The faintest shift in her eyes told me I was right even before the notifi