Page 110 of Reckless Obsession

Or maybe she says my full name.

Maybe she says breathe.

I can’t tell.

I can see her through the blur—kneeling, crying, one hand hovering near my face as if she wants to touch me but doesn’t know where. Her mouth is moving, frantic and terrified, but the words won’t make it through the roar in my ears.

Then my body is being moved.

Lifted, maybe.

And suddenly Tristan is there.

Above me.

Close enough that his face cuts through the blur better than anything else.

He’s saying something too. My name, maybe. Commands. Pleas. I can’t make any of it out.

But his eyes—

God.

There’s fear in them.

Real fear.

Naked and completely stripped of all that polished control he wears like armor. And there’s something else underneath it too. Something fierce, helpless, and so raw it reaches me through the panic, even as the static overtakes my brain.

I reach for his face, maybe, or maybe I only think about reaching.

I reach for breath and get none.

I try.

I really try.

I feel myself climbing upward and upward, fighting toward the surface of my own body, but the current is too strong, the panic too total, and my lungs refuse to fill no matter how desperately I claw for air.

I feel a single tear slide down my temple, cool against my too-hot skin.

And then everything goes dark.

Chapter 22

MAKSIM

The place is dark, but not fully.

There’s just enough light to make everything worse.

Enough to show me the wet stone walls. Enough to catch the rust on the chains bolted high above me. Enough to let the shadows move in ugly shapes whenever I lift my head. The air smells of rust, damp stone, and something sour that makes my stomach hurt.

I’m in the corner again.

Barefoot. Cold. Tattered clothes hanging off me as if they belong to somebody else. My knees are pulled to my chest because it hurts less that way, though “less” is a generous word for what my body feels like now. Everything hurts. My ribs. My shoulders. My face. My stomach. There are bruises on top of bruises, cuts gone stiff with dried blood, and the kind of ache that no longer feels separate in places, just one large throbbing thing stretched across all of me.

I don’t know how long I’ve been here.