Darkness.
It was all I could see, all I could feel. It swallowed me whole, dragging me down into a void I couldn’t escape. But there were whispers, faint and distant, like ghosts brushing against the edges of my mind.
“Ptichka.”
The word pierced through the darkness, a salvation pulling me toward the sin. His voice. Rough, raw, desperate. It felt like a thread, grounding me in the abyss.
He was here.
I wanted to cry, to reach for him, but my body felt heavy, slanted by the pain and exhaustion that dawdled like darks. The beeping grew louder, faster, reverberating in the silence, and I felt it-life stirring in me, faint and flickering like a dying flame.
I wasn’t dead.
The pain wasn’t as sharp as I remembered, but dulled now to an ache that hummed through my limbs. But the memory of it-the agony, the fear-was still fresh, clawing at the edges of my mind. I’d lost consciousness. I remembered falling, remembered the sharp sting of betrayal, of loss.
Had I woken up before? Or had I imagined it? I didn’t know anymore.
The darkness began to thin, light bleeding through the cracks. Slowly, painfully, I opened my eyes, the blinding white of the room assaulting my senses. Everything was blurry, the world tilting as I tried to focus.
“Ptichka?”
His voice was closer now, thick with emotion. I blinked. The fog in my mind cleared just enough to see him. He was there, sitting beside me, his face drawn and haunted, his eyes bloodshot. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, his usual sharpness dulled by something raw and broken. Something I never imagined a man like him have.
And yet, he was still my horizon. The anchor I clung to in this storm.
I tried to speak, but my throat was dry, raw from dry. A weak sound escaped me, like a pitiful attempt at words, and his hand was on mine instantly. So warm and gentle.
“You’re awake,” he breathed, relief flooding his voice. His thumb brushed against my knuckles, a touch so tender it almost broke me.
I wanted to cry. For him. For me. For the ruins we’d become.
He reached for a glass of water, his movements careful, measured, as if he was afraid to shatter me. “Here,” he said softly, slipping an arm behind me to help me sit up. The pain flared, but his muscular body steadied me, grounding me as he pressed the glass to my lips.
“Slowly,” he murmured.
I sipped, the cool liquid soothing the fire in my throat. When I was done, he set the glass aside and eased me back onto the pillows, his hand never leaving mine.
I looked at him then, really looked at him. The man who had lied to me. The man who had broken me and stitched.
The intensity of his gaze crushed me. I couldn’t look at him without feeling the sharp stab of betrayal, like a blade buried deep in my chest, twisting with every breath I took. His eyes-those same eyes that had looked at me like I was his entire world-were now a mirror of guilt, regret, and something darker I couldn’t name.
He had lied to me.
The man who swore he couldn’t live without me. The man who said I was his salvation, his reason for breathing, had betrayed me. Who does that to someone they claim to die for?
I didn’t understand him. I didn’t understand this man who had become both my sanctuary and my torment. How could someone so gentle with me, so protective, hold back something this monumental? Was I even important to him? Or was I so important that he thought sparing me the truth was an act of… love-no-care?
The questions churned in my head so relentlessly it suffocated me.
I studied him, the man who had torn through my life like a hurricane, leaving nothing but ruins in his wake. His face was a mask of anguish, his hand holding mine like it was the only thing tethering him to reality. But I couldn’t feel the warmth of his touch. All I felt was the coldness of his deception.
The words slipped from my lips before I could stop them. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He froze, the lines of his face hardening as his pale eyes met mine. For a moment, he didn’t move, didn’t breathe, and the tension between us thickened. The beeping of the heart monitor accelerated.
“Sera…” he called me by my name. No ptichka. No Fenochka. No little bird. Sera. The name this world called me by yet I didn’t want to acknowledge it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I repeated, louder this time, the crack in my voice betraying the storm of emotions I was barely holding together. I hadn’t forgotten anything. I just… wanted to learn the truth… from him. I wanted to see the depths he would push me into. The skies he’d fly me to before letting go of my hand. The fire he’d burn me in before drowning me.
He frowned, his jaw tightening, but there was something in his eyes-a flicker of realization that told me he knew exactly what I was talking about.
“He’s alive, isn’t he?”
The silence that followed was thunderous.
He didn’t deny it. He didn’t even try. Instead, he leaned closer, his hand tightening around mine, his other hand reaching up to cup my cheek. The touch was tender, reverent, but his presence loomed over me was commanding and vicious.
“Yes,” My heart broke. “He’s alive.”
The words hit me like a punch to the gut, knocking the air from my lungs. My chest tightened, the tears spilling over before I could stop them.
“Why?” I choked out, not meaning to cry, but I did. “Why would you hide this from me?”
He didn’t answer immediately. His thumb brushed away a tear from my cheek, with supressed desperation and fury.
“Because I couldn’t risk losing you,” A lie wrapped in velvet. “I didn’t want to… hurt you.”
His confession shattered me. So deeply I let out a strangled cry.
“You don’t get to make that choice for me,” I whimpered. “You don’t get to decide what I can handle, what I deserve to know.”
His forehead rested against mine, his breath mingling with mine as his grip on my hand tightened. “You are my everything, Ptichka. And I will burn this world to ash before I let anything take you from me. Even the truth. Your father… Brian Rosewood is not the man you loved.”
I closed my eyes, the tears falling freely now, my sobs muffled against his chest as he pulled me into his arms. I hated him. I loved him.
We were ruin and salvation, destruction and redemption. Two broken souls bound together in a way that was as painful as it was profound.
I didn’t know if we could ever live again after this if we could rebuild the trust that had been shattered. But at that moment, wrapped in his arms, his heartbeat steady against mine, I knew one thing… I would always find my way back to him, even if it destroyed me.