"I thought you left me," I say, my voice cracking. "I thought... I thought you didn't want me anymore."
"What? Never," he says, his voice absolute.
He pulls my hands against his chest, pressing them flat over his heart, and I feel the powerful rhythm beneath my palms.
"You are my one," he says, his voice low. "My everything. I would have torn the world apart sooner to find you if I thought you were alive."
I look up at him, and for the first time, I feel like I'm not in that room anymore. I'm not chained to Maxim's world. I'm here, with Adrian, and he never stopped looking.
The tears come harder, but I don't fight them. I just let them fall, let them wash away the poison Maxim planted in my mind.
Adrian doesn't say anything. He just holds my hands against his chest and lets me cry.
Minutes pass, maybe longer. I don't know.
Eventually, the tears slow, and I open my eyes.
He's watching me, his jaw tight, his dark eyes searching mine.
For the first time since he burst through that door at the château, I feel him.
Not the killer who shot Maxim in the face or the stranger who stood over me in a room full of blood.
But Adrian. My Adrian.
The boy who rode bikes with me all over the city. The one who kissed me by the fountain in Bra?ov. The one who held me while I cried after my grandmother died.
I smile.
It's small and fragile and maybe hard to see, but it's real, and it's the first time in a very long time that I have.
Adrian stares at me, and then he smiles, too.
"There you are," he says, wiping my tears away from my cheek with his thumb.
This moment makes me warm and steady, and I realize I don't want to talk about anything negative.
I don't want to talk about the château, or Maxim, or the pills. I don't want to think about any of it.
I want what they took from me, my safe place, back.
I lean closer, my hands still pressed against his chest.
"Talk to me about us, Adi," I say softly. "Anything but the last eighteen months. Please."
His expression shifts, relief mixing with something gentler, something that reminds me of the boy I fell in love with all those years ago, before I even knew what love was.
He nods, then sits down on the bed beside me, and I can see him thinking for a moment.
"You remember the summer when it was so hot we thought we'd melt? And so when it was dark, we snuck onto Mr. Popescu's roof?"
A breath of laughter escapes me before I can stop it.
"The one with the mean dog?"
"Yeah. That dog never stopped barking."
Adrian grins, and the sight of it sends warmth flooding through me.