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The silence between them stretched on, a dangerous tension hanging in the still corridor. Yalda was still pinned against the cold wall, her chest rose and fell erratically. Alexander’s hands were firm on either side of her, his towering frame shadowing her petite one.
Neither of them moved, neither spoke. Their breaths mingled in the narrow space, hot and uneven, soaked in the memory of everything that once was, and everything that could no longer be.
Yalda couldn’t bring herself to look away from him. His face was composed, as always. Cold. Impeccable. Devastating. His jaw clenched tightly, the only crack in his otherwise unyielding facade. She hated him for it. Hated that she was shaking, and he looked like nothing touched him.
Alexander finally blinked, and when he did, his voice came low and tight, a warning laced with quiet desperation.
“Don’t follow me again, Yalda.”
Her breath hitched, but she didn’t speak. She didn’t trust her voice, not when her heart felt like it was imploding, not when the ache in her chest was almost unbearable.
“I’m warning you,” he continued, his voice darker now. “Stay away from me.”
Her lips parted, a protest forming, but he didn’t let her speak.
“If you don’t,” he said slowly, deliberately, “I will lose what little control I have left. And then what? We spiral? Again?” His gaze pierced into her like ice. “Havent you learned that I'm no good for you? Don't you see what my toxicity does to you?"
Yalda’s throat constricted. Her eyes glistened, not with new tears, but with a century of them she hadn’t cried yet. The pain clawed up her throat, begging to be released.
Alexander’s eyes flickered, just barely. “You think I haven’t imagined what it would be like to hold you again? You think I don’t wake up in the middle of the night trying to forget the sound of your laugh? The way your body fits against mine?”
Yalda inhaled sharply.
He leaned in, his voice a breath against her ear. “You think I don’t want you?” His jaw brushed her cheek, but it was not an act of intimacy, it was restraint. “But wanting you has never been the problem, Yalda. It's surviving you that I can't do.”
And with that, he stepped back, as if the air between them hadn’t just been set on fire. His hands fell away from the wall, from her, and suddenly the cold returned in full force.
"Stay away from me, I won't tell you again."
He walked away, footsteps harsh on the marble floor.
Yalda remained pressed to the wall, the only thing keeping her upright. Her knees buckled seconds later, her body slowly folded, she sank until she was kneeling, her palms hitting the floor to support her trembling weight.
And then she cried.
Not the kind of quiet crying she'd mastered over the past couple of months, but a raw, soundless grief that hollowed her chest and stole the oxygen from her lungs. Her tears dropped silently onto the floor beneath her, her shoulders rising and falling in uneven rhythm.
Everything hurt. Her body, her pride, her heart. She wanted to hate him, she wanted to hate herself more. How could he still move like that inside her, how could he leave her in ruins without doing much at all?
She didn’t know how long she stayed like that, crumpled in the dim hallway with only her pain for company. It could have been minutes. Hours. Time no longer mattered.
A soft voice reached her through the fog.
“Yalda.”
She didn’t look up at first. She was too ashamed. Too tired.
She only looked up when a familiar hand gently touched her shoulder. Ioannis. His expression was carved with concern, his brows drawn together as he crouched in front of her.
“Oh, Yalda,” he whispered, brushing a strand of hair from her tearstained cheek.
She tried to speak, to explain, to tell him not to look at her like that, but nothing came out. Her voice had abandoned her, drowned in grief.
Without saying a word, Ioannis slid an arm around her back and the other beneath her knees. He lifted her easily, gently, as if she weighed nothing, and held her close to his chest. Yalda curled into him like a child, exhausted beyond reason, emotionally shattered.
He carried her through the silent corridors, away from the shadows that haunted her. Away from the man who had left her bleeding again with nothing more than a few tightly spoken words.
Inside the suite, the lights were dimmed, the air hushed with luxury. Ioannis laid her down carefully on the edge of the bed. He didn’t bombard her with questions or force any comforts she wasn’t ready for. He simply sat beside her, his presence calm, his silence patient.
Yalda turned away from him slightly, curled into herself like a wounded creature. She felt like a joke, an idiot who thought she could go to war with her own heartbreak and win.
“I know you’re hurting,” Ioannis said quietly after a long silence. “But this… this is killing you.”
Her eyes remained closed.
“You don’t have to keep doing this to yourself,” he added. “You’re allowed to walk away.”
Yalda didn’t answer. But she thought about it. Really thought about it.
What did it say about her that even now, after all of it, her heart still pounded at the memory of Alexander’s voice? That her body still remembered the shape of his? That no matter how far she ran, her soul never seemed to catch up?
Ioannis sighed and leaned back, his voice softer now. “Just sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Yalda didn’t sleep.
She just lay there, surrounded by silence, staring at the ceiling, haunted by Alexander’s words, by the ghost of his touch that still lingered on her hip.
She shut her eyes tightly to stop the tears from falling but it was useless, they fell, and fell, and fell till her eyes became sore and red. And then she fell asleep, completely exhausted and drained.
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