A D R I A N

I don’t remember walking out of the clinic, or the hallway, or the way the door sounded when it clicked shut behind me. I only remember her voice.

“Maybe we were a mistake.”
“He deserves someone who won’t cost him everything.”

It’s ridiculous, how fast those words carve under the ribs. How fast they rewrite every good thing I’ve let myself believe since the cave. It shouldn’t hurt like this; I’ve survived worse, betrayals, corporate wars and my own damn family, and losing people I actually loved.

But nothing has cut like hearing her tear herself away from me in that tiny supply room, smelling like eucalyptus and heartbreak, and the stupid thing is, she wasn’t trying to hurt me. That’s what makes it unbearable, she was trying to protect me, the one thing I never asked her to do.

I made it to the stairwell, not even consciously, I just ended up there, hands braced on cold metal railing, head down like someone hit me. I breathe in, but it feels like the air goes nowhere, like there’s no oxygen left in this damn building.

“She thinks I’d let them destroy her.” The thought is acid. “She thinks I’d pick the board over her. She thinks.. Christ! she thinks she’s a mistake.”

My throat tightens hard enough to bruise from the inside, and the worst part? a piece of me already believes her, because what if she’s right? What if everything around me, my name, my island, this empire that’s supposed to be my inheritance, is exactly the thing that’s going to break her in half? What if she leaves before I can even prove that I’d burn every boardroom to the ground for her? My hands are shaking and I stare at them like they don’t belong to me.

“I can’t lose her,” I breathe. Then: “I already am.”

And maybe that’s why I do the next thing, why the spiral starts, because the pain is too sharp, too raw, too exposed. I need something familiar, something numb and something that feels like control, even though it never was. I need to not feel like this, I need to not feel anything. So I reached for the one habit that never asked questions and never cared about my name or my heart or what I really wanted. The old life, faceless, effortless and empty and God help me, I go looking for the numb.

I don’t remember texting her, it’s  just muscle memory from a version of myself I thought I buried back in that cave with her body wrapped around mine. I send nothing but a location and time, not a single word, and still, she arrives within minutes.

Skirt tight, lips glossed, pupils already blown wide like she’s expecting the man I used to be. The man who didn’t care, the man who never touched with intention or softness or anything close to feeling. She closes the suite door behind her with one soft click, tilting her head like she thinks she knows exactly what I need.

“Rough night?” she purrs, stepping close. Her hand lands on my chest and I feel… nothing. Not even the old flicker of distraction, just a hollow pit where something living used to be.

“Need to unwind?” she asks, nails tracing the line of my shirt. “I remember how to help.”

Normally, this would be the part where I’d pin her against the wall, set the rhythm, set the rules, shut my brain off. Instead, all I can see is Elara in that supply room, her voice breaking, her body folded in on itself, the letter crushed in her hands like it was killing her and the way she couldn’t even look up when she said those words.

My stomach twists hard and the faceless woman presses closer, fingers sliding down my torso, trying to unbutton my shirt. “Come on, Adrian,” she whispers. “Let me make you feel better.”

But the second her fingers brush my skin, something in me recoils so violently I almost step backward. She isn’t Elara, she isn’t heat and storm and midnight fire, she isn’t the woman who looks at me like she can see everything I’m terrified to admit. She’s not wrong, she’s just not… her.

I close my eyes, willing it to work and wishing I could still be the man who takes what’s easy instead of what’s real. I tell my body to respond, but it doesn’t,  not even close. She kisses me, hard, messy, and insistent but I feel absolutely nothing. No spark, no heat, no flash of control, just… numb.

Her hands slide up my chest, around my neck, and the moment she tries to pull my mouth harder into hers, something inside me snaps like a frayed wire finally giving.

“Stop,” I hear myself say. She doesn’t, she thinks it’s part of the game and presses closer. “Come on, baby, you called me. Let me..”

“I said stop.”  This time it’s sharper, louder. She freezes, her eyes flick to mine, confusion surfacing. “Did I… do something wrong?” Yes. No. God, none of this is her fault. I step back fast enough that my spine hits the opposite wall. My breathing comes shallow, and uneven.

“I can’t,” I choke. “Not tonight. Not.. just go.” Her face softens in a way I don’t deserve. “Adrian… what happened?”

Nothing. Everything. Another image hits me full force: Elara’s voice cracking.
“Maybe we were a mistake.” A sick, hot panic crawls under my skin.

“I said go,” I repeat, but it comes out hoarse, like it’s scraping its way out of my chest. She hesitates for one small, human moment. Not as a lover, not as anything romantic but just as someone who sees that something in me is breaking open in ways she can’t fix. Then she nods, gathers her purse with trembling hands, and slips out the door without another word.

The silence hits the room harder than any slammed door would have. I sink down onto the edge of the bed, elbows on my knees, shaking so badly I have to grip my own wrists to steady them. This was supposed to be numbness, a distraction, a way to drown the hurt. Instead, it feels like I just ripped the last piece of my old life out by the roots.

And the worst part, the part that guts me, is that even in this hollowed-out mess of a moment, there’s only one thought pounding through my skull, loud and merciless:

I only want her.  God help me, I only want her.

The room feels wrong without her in it,  not Elara.. God, no, that would kill me, but the woman who just left. The one who used to be easy, predictable, simple. The one who never asked for my heart, never even looked close enough to see where it was.

The air feels wrong now, like it still holds the ghost of who I used to be, and even breathing it hurts. I stand too quickly; the floor sways, I don’t care, I need space. The balcony doors fly open under my hands, and night air crashes over me, cold, salty, edged with something metallic that smells too much like regret. I brace both hands on the railing and bow my head, squeezing my eyes shut.

“What the hell am I doing?” I say it out loud because the silence in my skull is too loud. I tried tonight, I really did. I tried to be the man who could walk away, the man who could shut the door on feeling, on vulnerability, on anything that looks like love. But the second another woman touched me, my entire body rejected it. Like she was a wrong code, the wrong frequency.

She wasn’t Elara, and I didn’t want her, not even a little. A harsh laugh claws out of me, humorless and ugly. “Fuck,” I breathe. “I’m ruined.”

The wind grabs the words and throws them back at me, I drag a palm over my face. My skin is hot, burning with leftover shame, shame for calling that woman, for trying to go backwards, for thinking numbing myself would make this easier. It made everything worse, because now I know, viscerally, bone-deep, there’s no going back to who I was.
There’s no reverting to faceless bodies and controlled distance and pretending I don’t want anything real.

I want her, not the idea of her,  not the cave, not the adrenaline or the heat or the survival. Her.

Elara crying in a supply room because she thinks she’s going to ruin me. Elara shaking when she said we were a mistake.  Elara trying to let me go because she thinks she’s protecting me. She’s the one breaking, and I walked away.

“I can’t lose her,” I say softly into the night. “I can’t.” and the truth hits so hard I nearly double over: I already lost every version of myself that existed before her. What’s left is a man who can’t breathe without the thought of her.

The wind shifts, cooler now, carrying the distant hum of waves against rock.  I inhale once, a ragged, broken breath, and the words come without permission, without thought, without any armor left to hide behind.

“Only her.”

It leaves me like a vow,  like a confession,  like a truth I should’ve said to her instead of to the dark. I lift my head, heart pounding hard enough to bruise. Tomorrow, I will tell myself and tomorrow, everything changes.