127
The silence after a breakdown was always the worst.
Yalda had grown still in Ioannis’s arms, her breathing no longer ragged but tight and shallow, like every inhale was a battle her body didn’t want to fight anymore. She sat there, quiet against his chest, until something shifted in her guts.
And then she bolted.
Without a word, without looking back, she slipped out of his embrace and rushed toward the bathroom, her heels clicking across the polished floor. The sound echoed like gunfire in the quiet of the suite.
Ioannis stood, confused for only a second before the retching started.
He was at the bathroom door in moments, knocking lightly. “Yalda?”
She didn't answer, she couldn't. She doubled over the toilet as another wave of sickness hit her.
Her body heaved violently, betraying her with every twist of nausea. Her gown bunched around her knees, hair clung to her damp face. The smell of perfume and champagne turned rancid in her throat, and her palms were slick against the cold porcelain.
When it finally ended, she slumped beside the toilet, chest rising and falling as though she'd run a marathon. The tears came next, they were quiet, bitter, and endless.
Ioannis waited a moment, then opened the door slowly.
She didn’t stop him.
He crouched beside her, his brows drawn in concern. “You're going to make yourself sick.”
“I already am,” she replied, voice hoarse.
She reached up to wipe her mouth with trembling fingers, and he offered her a warm towel without speaking. His presence was large, steady, and comforting. He let her have space, but he wouldn’t leave her side. Not like this.
Her eyes were swollen, skin pale. Her whole body shook like it couldn’t remember how to be still. She clutched the towel, curling in on herself as if she could fold away from the pain.
“I can’t make sense of this,” she whispered.
“You don’t have to.”
“I thought I was over him,” she said. “I thought I had healed.”
But she was just lying to herself now. She knew she hadn't healed, she knew she could never get over Alexander.
Ioannis didn’t speak, but his hand found hers, his thumb brushing over her knuckles in slow circles.
“It’s not even about love anymore,” Yalda continued, her voice fragile but insistent. “It’s about everything he made me feel. Everything he left me with. And now… seeing him again, like that…”
It was about how he'd looked away as though she had been absolutely nothing to him.
Her voice caught.
She squeezed her eyes shut, and the image flashed again in her mind: Alexander standing across the ballroom, his expression unreadable, and then, most painfully, the moment he turned away.
No pause. No flicker of surprise. No acknowledgement. It was as if he’d seen her and felt nothing.
Had she become a stranger to him?
“I don’t understand,” she choked out, dragging her knees to her chest. “How can he look at me and just...look away? As if I never existed. As if he didn’t break me. As if none of it meant anything.”
Ioannis exhaled slowly, his hand tightening around hers.
Her lips trembled. “Did he move on so easily? Did I matter so little?”
She hadn’t realized how deep the wound still went until tonight. Until Alexander’s silence cracked something inside her she’d thought was sealed shut. It wasn’t just the loss that hurt, it was the absence of recognition, the erasure of everything they had shared.
“I’ve cried over him more than I care to admit,” she whispered. “But this… this feels like a different kind of pain.”
Ioannis leaned in and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. His hand moved from hers to gently cradle her face, turning her toward him with soft insistence.
“You didn’t deserve what he gave you,” he said, his voice low. “You gave your heart to someone who didn’t know how to carry it.”
The words cut deep and soothed at once.
Yalda didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Her throat was raw from both crying and vomiting, and her body ached with exhaustion. The adrenaline that had fueled her panic now left her empty, heavy, and hollow.
Ioannis helped her to her feet, steadying her when her knees wobbled, and guided her toward the bed.
She didn’t move when he unzipped the back of her gown. She didn’t process when he pulled it gently from her shoulders and slid one of his soft cotton shirts over her head. It smelled faintly of sandalwood and the ocean, and it swallowed her frame entirely. The comfort it brought was instant.
He tucked her under the covers, his movements slow, measured, tender.
When he slid into bed beside her, she didn’t hesitate, she folded herself into his side, resting her head against his chest, her arm thrown across his waist.
Right now, she needed this. Needed him.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered into her hair. “You’re safe now.”
But her mind wouldn’t quiet.
It still looped that image of exander turning away. So effortlessly. So cleanly.
Did he think of her at all? Did he regret anything? Or had she truly just been a chapter he’d skipped past?
“I don’t think I’ll ever understand him,” she murmured after a long silence.
Ioannis didn’t respond immediately. He only rubbed her back slowly, his hand warm and steady.
“You don’t have to understand him to let him go,” he said finally. “You only have to stop letting him own the parts of you he didn’t deserve.”
Her throat tightened. She didn’t know how to do that. She wasn’t even sure she could. Alexander literally own her. But she wanted to stop feeling like someone who’d been discarded.
Wanted to feel real again. Loved. Worthy.
“I’m tired,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“I feel like I’ve been carrying a body that doesn’t belong to me.”
He kissed her temple. “Then rest. You’ve carried enough.”
And so, slowly, in the quiet comfort of his arms, her breathing began to slow. Her trembling ceased. The tears dried one by one until all that remained was a dull, familiar ache, one she could live with.
And somewhere between his steady heartbeat and the warmth of his embrace, she drifted to sleep.
Log in with Google Account
Chapters
Favorite
Settings
