“I should be repelled,” I say. “I should be counting down the days until I escape. But instead I catch myself feeling…steady. Safe. Like the danger sharpens me instead of breaking me.” My voice cracks. “And I don’t know what that says about me.”
I press my palms to my eyes, breathing through the burn. “I’m scared that I’m changing. That I’m starting to fit into this life. That I don’t want to leave it.”
Ellie reaches for my hands, pulling them gently down. Her grip is warm, grounding.
“Ray,” she says softly, “you’re not broken for surviving. Or for adapting.”
“But what if it’s more than adapting?” I ask. “What if I want this?”
She studies me for a long moment, then says, “Then it means you’re human. And you fell into something intense during the worst moment of your life.” Her thumb brushes over my knuckles. “It doesn’t mean you’re lost. It just means you need to be honest—with yourself and with him.”
I let out a shaky breath.
Because that might be the scariest part of all.
Konstantin doesn’t just protect me.
He sees how close I am to stepping fully into his world.
And he isn’t pushing me away from it.
I shake my head, a humorless breath slipping out. “Maybe I’m broken,” I whisper. “Maybe I’m just like all the men I claim to hate. Maybe I crave this. The danger. The edge.”
Ellie doesn’t flinch.
She tightens her grip on my hands instead, grounding me, like she’s done a hundred times before. Her thumbs rub slow, familiar circles, the way they used to when I spiraled during finals week.
“Do you remember senior year?” she says quietly. “When everyone else went home, and you stayed back because one witness statement didn’t add up?”
I sniff, nodding despite myself.
“You were on the floor of our apartment at three in the morning,” she continues, a small smile tugging at her mouth. “Surrounded by case files. Highlighters everywhere. You hadn’t slept. You hadn’t eaten. You kept muttering, ‘One more page, Ellie. Just one more.’”
My chest tightens.
“You wouldn’t let it go,” she says. “Not because it was dangerous. But because the truth mattered. Because you mattered. You bend, Ray. You always have. But you don’t break.”
Her gaze sharpens, steady and sure. “This—” she gestures vaguely between us, to the mansion beyond the hedges, to the life pressing in on me, “—doesn’t erase that girl. And it doesn’t turn you into something ugly.”
I swallow hard.
“Love and fear can feel identical,” she adds softly. “Racing heart. Tight chest. That pull you can’t explain. Only you get to decide which one this is.”
My lips tremble. I don’t answer.
Tears slip free instead, silent and hot, dropping onto our joined hands as Ellie leans closer, holding me while I fall apart without shattering.
“Remember when you cried over cold pizza at four a.m. because a case citation was wrong. Not because it affected your grade—because it wasn’t fair.”
I laugh hard, breath hitching as it turns into a sob.
“You’re the girl who carries snacks for everyone else and forgets to eat them herself,” Ellie says softly. “The girl who memorized my coffee order before I even knew it. The girl whostayed with me on the bathroom floor after my first bad breakup and read aloud from your notes just to distract me.”
My shoulders shake.
“This world cannot change you,” she says firmly. “And no one can rewrite you. You’re still you—terrified, brave, stubborn as hell.”
For a moment, in the middle of all this danger and devotion and impossible choices, I feel seen.