Adriana huffs. “He’s going to kill you,” she sobs. “You know that, right? He’s justusingyou. He’ll take everything. Your contacts, your partnerships...and then he’ll kill you.”
“Stop,” Nolan snaps.
“And then he’ll sell me to that fucking Vlad guy,” she shrieks, terror lacing every word. “You saw how that fucker looked at me, Nolan. You don’t understand. You’renothingcompared to him.”
His expression shifts, unease flickering for just a flash before it’s gone. “I don’t need to hear this right now,” he says.
My eyes flutter, tears leaking out. I can’t stop them. My body shakes in small, broken tremors as it remembers the trauma it was just put through for god knows how long. I reach for Adriana without thinking. My mind immediately forces the memory of my overdose forward from a few weeks ago. When I was reaching for someone else.
She gasps and immediately gathers me up, pulling my head into her lap. Her hands cradle my skull, pressing my face against her stomach. She rocks slightly, smoothing my hair back again and again. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. You’re safe here.”
Safe.
The word barely means anything anymore. I can’t help but sob against her. The dose Alexei gave me keeps me floating just above the pain in my body.
Nolan watches us. He clears his throat. “Well,” he says awkwardly, trying to sound casual. “Looks like you finally got him to like you.” He gestures toward my head in her lap.
Her body stills. Slowly, she looks up at him. Her face twists, but it’s hollow.
I squeeze my eyes shut, another sob tearing through me as the room tilts again. Nolan isn’t scared enough. Not of Alexei or what he’s done.
Not of what he’s turning me into.
I wake up slowly. Not the wild, panicked jolt I’ve learned to expect, but a heavy, drugged drag back into my body. The blankets are warm. My head feels full, thoughts lagging a half second behind. I blink, realizing that I’m in our bed. The afternoon sun is bright out the window, even if the curtains are drawn.
I try to move, and pain blooms along my arm. I suck in a breath and roll my shoulder carefully, heart starting to thud harder as awareness creeps in. I’m clean. That’s the next thing I notice. The dried blood is gone, and I’m wearing soft clothes. One of my pairs of sweatpants and a T-shirt. Someone changed me. Someone washed me.
My stomach turns. I lift my arm slowly, vision swimming as I bring it closer. The inside of my elbow is a mess—purple and yellow bruising blooming violently under the skin. A vein stands out like it’s been traumatized. Like someone missed and didn’t care if they did.
I swallow hard, throat tight, and let my arm drop back to the mattress. Then I feel the weight beside me. I turn my head.
Adriana is asleep on her side, facing me. Hair loose across the pillow. One hand curled near her mouth, the other resting close to my chest. She looks peaceful and normal. Like she didn’t spend years hurting me. My chest tightens painfully, and an unwanted thought slips in:
I miss when she was one of the worst things in my life.
Back then, there was a hierarchy of pain. Something I could at least measure. Something I could endure and still recognize myself afterward. Now she’s a lesser evil. The realization of that makes me feel sick.
I stare at her and try to piece it together. She must’ve cleaned me up. Nolan wouldn’t have the stomach for it. He barely looked at me when I was like that. Adriana does, though. Always has. She’s a vile human being. That hasn’t changed.
But she knows we’re all fucked.
She can’t leave. Not really. Nolan controls her money, her access, her entire life. If she walks, she has nothing. No safety net or identity outside of what he’s built around her.
In a way...she’s trapped, too.
It doesn’t absolve her. It just makes everything messier. She had power over me.Realpower. And she used it. Over and over. Took what little agency I had left and fucked me in ways that were confusing and...permanent. I’ll never forget the times she disregarded me entirely for her own pleasure.
When you’re stumbling around in the dark, you grab whatever light is available. Even if your grip is too tight. Even if you don’t realize until it’s too late that you’re not holding the light—
You’re smothering it.
That's what I would have done to…her…if I had stayed in Seaside. She was my light. So instead of smothering her, I tucked myself back into the dark.
I lie there, staring at Adriana’s sleeping face, arm throbbing, body heavy with drugs and memory and shame, and wonder when exactly the line disappeared. When survival stopped looking like hope and started looking like this.
This time when I wake, it’s to darkness. The only little light flows in through the cracks of the curtains from the city below. I sigh, discovering that Adriana’s body is pressed against mine.
Her back is curved into me, and my arm is wrapped around her waist, hand resting above her hip. My fingers curl withoutthinking, as if my body remembers this more than my mind does. I've slept in bed with Adriana more than with anyone else…aside from Micah, maybe. I wish it wasn't the case.