Page 135 of The Vagabond

She doesn’t blink. “Say it.”

I look away. Because if I say it out loud, it becomes real. Irrevocable. A vow I can’t take back.

“Mia…” My voice cracks.

“You do. Max, you love him. I know it. There’s no way you would’ve left with him otherwise. I see it in the pain in your face.”

I drop to the bed, the mattress dipping under me like it’s swallowing me whole.

I can’t look at her.

I turn toward the window, let my eyes blur as I trace the horizon beyond the estate — the stone walls, the iron gates, the hard line of the trees. Like maybe, if I stare long enough, I’ll find another life out there. A life where I don’t have to crawl my way back from the ruins. A life where I get tokeepSaxon. But that’s not this life.

Mia crosses the room, her steps careful, measured, like she’s approaching something wounded and wild.

She sits beside me, the bed shifting with her weight. Neither of us speaks. The silence stretches long and tight between us, a wire strung between ribs.

Finally, she whispers, “Why did he bring you back, Max?”

I close my eyes, a shaky breath shuddering out of me.

“Because he’s trying to save me,” I whisper. “Because he thinks he can’t fix himself if I’m still holding on.”

Mia’s quiet for a moment. And then — softly, gently, like she’s peeling back my skin to get to the heart of me…

“Did you ask him to?”

The breath catches hard in my throat.

“No,” I choke. “I didn’t want to come back. I didn’t want to leave him.”

My shoulders curl in, my hands balling into fists on my knees. The words spill out, raw and trembling, slicing me open.

“I only ever wantedhim.”

Mia slips her arm around me, pulling me in, her forehead resting against the side of my head.

We sit like that, the two of us wrapped in silence, tears sliding hot down my face, carving their own painful path. I’m tired. I’m bones and bruises and this heart that keeps choosing a man who keeps trying to save me.

“I don’t know how to be here without him,” I whisper, the words slipping out like a confession.

Mia nods like she’s been there, like she understands exactly what I’m going to say even before I open my mouth to speak.

“I love him,” I whisper. “I love him. And it’s killing me.”

The tears come then. Quiet. Shaking. Stealing my breath.

She doesn’t interrupt. She just lets me fall apart in the safety of the space between us.

“I didn’t want to leave him,” I say. “But he made me.”

Mia’s voice is gentle. “And you didn’t fight him?”

“No,” I whisper. “That’s the worst part. I made it too easy for him to let me go. Because I understood that it wasn’t about him walking away from me. It was about me walking back to myself.”

I stare out the window like it holds the answers I can’t seem to find in my chest.

“When he found me in Kadri’s palace, I was already in a place where I didn’t care whether or not I woke up the next day,” I say. “I didn’t care if the world burned. I was already dead inside. Just… a vessel. A shadow waiting to disappear.”

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