Page 118 of Nemesync
Not when I wasn’t ready for the humiliation and pity it provoked. Not when it made me feel so weak.
Maybe I’ll never tell her about it after all.
Zanae absorbs my story, her eyes filled with so much softness, “So, my father killed yours?”
“I saw him that night. I was twelve years old, and he left my father’s lifeless body in front of me, and then he went back to the car like nothing happened, and you were there with him that night in the back of the car, and you sent me a flying kiss. Niko and Ben were my friends even back then. They helped me so much, Zanae.”
Her amber eyes are so full of surprise and regret.
“This obsession about making you feel pain and own your spirit is so deep inside me. You owe me your very soul, baby. I don’t know if I can get rid of this completely, it’s eating me up, because now that I have you so close to me, I don’t want you to go, but it’s hurting me. It’s like a war inside my fucking brain. I’m obsessed with you. So obsessed it’s killing me.”
She nods, stopping the strokes on my back
“I’m sorry, Elijah.”
I pull her hand back to my shoulder, I need to feel her.
“Don’t be,Milaya. I watched my mother die because of the organization, not you. The pictures of her dead body after being tortured and raped are indelibly ingrained in every part of my mind. They killed my whole family somehow, they killed me too.”
“I... I didn’t know.”
My gaze goes back to her, her eyes full of tears ready to fall. I caress her cheek with a weak smile, “You know what’s worse? It was when I knew you were taken by the same people as mymother. I thought I was going insane, Zanae, the only woman I cared about, was taken again by them.”
Her hand lightly caressed my jaw.
“And I found you, so beautiful yet so broken; your friend was in a really bad situation. I saw you, Zanae; I saw your eyes; I know you faced horror that night.”
A long pause follows that revelation as she takes her time realizing that I was the masked man who kept her in my arms and took her back home that night.
But then her fingers brush against my lips, soon replaced by her soft lips.Akiss. She exhales gently and murmurs, “You saved me, and you saved her.”
“I’ll kill them all for what they did to you, I’ll kill them, and then I’ll come home to you.”
“You saved my life, Elijah.” She places my hand on her heart, brushing my fingers with her delicate thumb, “You. Elijah Volkov. Saved. Me.”
“Maybe, but I was too late. I couldn’t be the monster you needed to protect you that night.”
She just shakes her head, “No. You’re the reason I had those last moments of happiness before I shut down completely. You’re not a monster.”
“You can’t be sure about that, Zanae.”
“I am. You’ll never be the monster in my story. Your heart and mind are not just darkness, you bring light to my world, Elijah. You are bright and beautiful,” she answers, letting small kisses on the tip of my fingers.
Bright and beautiful.
She thinks I’m beautiful.
I met her eyes, gratitude and turmoil swirling within me, “You saved me too, Zanae. You saved my heart, and soul. That obsession, it saved me.”
When I started protecting her without sending guards to ensure she was safe, everything changed. I had the picture of that night in my head in fucking black and white, and then I’ll just look at her and colors would reappear again, the picture changing to Zanae listening to music and looking at the sky.
She was a young woman just starting her adult life, and my world shifted to align with hers. Despite my obligations and responsibilities, she was always my top priority.
“I’ll teach you to make it live again,” she says.
“Why would you do that?”
“Because you’re making my heart warm again.”
