They’d take all of her light and snuff it out, twisting her into something dark and damaged like Cesca. She deserved better.
She needed to be safe and sheltered from the horrors of the world.
I took the stairs two steps at a time, rounding the corner to her apartment. I banged the heel of my hand against her door when I finally reached it, the sound echoing through the hallway as I pressed my ear to the wooden surface.
There was no movement on the other side, nothing to even signal that she was home.
“Irina! Open the fucking door!” I ordered, rapping my knuckles against it loudly enough that her neighbor next door opened his door to glare at me.
“Maybe she’s not home,” he suggested, crossing his arms over his chest. My silent glare sent him back into his apartment, leaving me to bang on the door one more time. “I swear to God, I will break it down, Butterfly.”
Nothing.
I groaned my frustration, reaching down to test the knob before I kicked the door in and had to deal with having a new one installed.
It turned in my hand, unlocked, as dread filled me.
Jesus. Fuck.
I shoved it open after a moment of fear froze me, erupting into action as I reached for the gun strapped to my side. I pulled it free, quickly moving through her apartment and clearing the main space before I headed to her bedroom at the end of the hall. I ignored the pulsing urge to call out to her, to yell her name and force her to respond now that I was in her space.
If anyone had hurt her and happened to still be hanging around, I couldn’t risk them doing something desperate.
I stepped into her bedroom, my gaze snagging on her prone form lying sprawled across the bed. She was fast asleep in spite of all my banging on the door, completely unaware of my presence as I cleared her master bath to make sure no one else was in the apartment with us.
It wasn’t until I stepped back into the bedroom that I spotted the bottles of pills on the nightstand.
Everything went quiet. My ears rang, and that organ in my chest, which I refused to believe still functioned, stopped.
“Butterfly,” I murmured, stepping closer to the bed and staring down at her intently. Her chest rose and fell with steady, reassuring breaths as my heart jumped to life anew.
She was fucking alive.
A fresh scab rested on the inside of her thigh, a small trail of red against her perfect skin. Another hurt marked into her flesh, but this one was different.
This one was my responsibility, and it threatened to consume me alive.
I pulled open the nightstand, finding a knife in there and shoving it into my pocket. I’d clear out her kitchen knives if I had to. Find some way to stop her from hurting herself just to feel. There were other ways, better ways.
I scoffed. Like letting your buddy beat the shit out of you in a boxing ring?
I had no right to judge her for what she did to feel alive.
I sat on the edge of the bed, watching her chest to reassure myself before I turned my attention to the bottles on her nightstand. The first was a commonly known sleeping aid and the second an antidepressant. Tucked inside the drawer were a half dozen other bottles, from anxiety medication to vitamins.
She had an entire pharmacy at her disposal, and I didn’t have the slightest idea why anyone thought she needed medication. She was perfect exactly as she was.
I closed the drawer, determined to do more research to come to a better understanding of why she had the struggles she did. I lost track of how long I watched over her, waiting for that inevitable moment when she would wake up.
Eventually, it happened. Her eyelids fluttered like the wings of a butterfly as she opened them slowly with a groan. The moment the sunlight shining through the gaps in her curtains hit her face, she jolted upright in a panic.
“Shhh,” I said, encouraging her to lie back. Her attention snapped to me, her lips pressing together tightly as her anger rose.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“You didn’t show up for work this morning. I was worried about you, Butterfly,” I answered, standing from the bed and moving to grab a washcloth from the counter of her bathroom. I ran cool water on it, returning to the bed and pressing it to her forehead to help with the headache that I was sure was brewing between her eyes, judging from the way she pinched them closed.
“Don’t call me that,” she argued, snatching the cloth out of my hand. She put it to her own forehead, seemingly determined to do it for herself in the wake of my betrayal.
“You didn’t seem to mind before,” I pointed out, getting more comfortable on the edge of the bed. She shifted, tugging her nightgown down her thighs to cover the fresh wound that we both knew I’d already seen. “I told you to call me.”
“That was all before you told me I was just ‘available.’ I don’t want you to call me some meaningless fucking nickname or be here to make me feel alive when you’re the one who made me feel half-dead in the first place,” she argued, pushing herself up to sit. “I need to get to work. I think you can find the door on your own.”
“It isn’t meaningless,” I said. “That nickname is probably the only thing in my life that has meaning.”
“Then you should save it for someone who matters to you,” she spat, standing from the bed and moving for her bathroom when I made no move to leave her alone.
“You matter.”
“Then why did you say those things yesterday? Why try to hurt me if I matter?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest. It pushed her breasts up, giving her cleavage that hadn’t been there previously and tempted me away from her face.
I didn’t know much about women, but I was fairly certain staring at her tits when she was pissed at me would be a mistake. “You want things that I can’t give you.”
“I just want somebody to love me,” she murmured, dropping her arms suddenly as if it pained her to think about the reality of that being too much to ask. “But I know that’s impossible.”
“If I could love anyone, it would be you,” I said, wincing as the admission came out before I could stop it. I knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it was true. Something in Irina called to the darkest parts of me, but I knew she would call to the light parts, too.
If there’d been any left.
“If you could?” she asked, taking a step closer. Her face tilted to the side, the hope she hadn’t dared to feel before filling those green eyes.
“I don’t have a heart to love. I’ll never be able to give you that,” I said, taking a step away and putting more distance between us. It fell like a chasm, leaving us standing on opposite sides of an impossible void.
“Then I guess you were right about one thing,” she said, turning away from me and starting the shower as if I didn’t exist. “You should go, after all.”
She held a hand under the spray of the water, testing the temperature before she stripped her nightgown off over her head and stepped beneath it.
Dismissed, and for all that it mattered to Irina, I was already gone.
I did as she asked, leaving her alone while knowing it was the best thing I could do for her. She deserved a man with a heart full of all the love she could dream of.
That man wasn’t me.
16
IRINA