Chapter 7: Stay or Run
502 Words
I didn’t sleep that night.
Not after what I saw.
The blood. The rope. The calm in Saint’s voice as he promised violence like it was just part of the routine.
It should’ve been enough to make me run.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I sat on the edge of the bed in his shirt, fingers brushing my lips where he almost kissed me. Where he marked me in a different way. Not with bruises. But with truth.
I’d tasted danger before. But Saint?
He made it feel safe.
And maybe that was the most dangerous part.
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The next morning, I found him outside—bare chest again, black joggers low on his hips, knuckles still bruised.
He was fixing something on a motorcycle, cigarette in his mouth, grease on his hands. The sun hit his skin like it had a personal grudge.
I stared too long.
He noticed.
“You’re still here,” he said, not looking up.
“I thought about leaving.”
He flicked ash onto the pavement. “But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out.”
He turned to me slowly. The wind ruffled his hair, made him look less like a monster and more like a man who’d forgotten how to be gentle.
“Do you want to go?” he asked.
His voice was different now. Lower. Bare.
I didn’t answer.
Instead, I stepped toward him.
“I don’t think you know what to do with someone who chooses you,” I whispered.
His eyes locked on mine. Something inside them cracked.
“You think I want you to stay?” he said, stepping closer.
“Don’t you?”
“I want you gone,” he rasped. “Because I’ll ruin you, Aria. You know that, right?”
“You already are.”
He growled—frustrated, maybe with himself—and grabbed my wrist. Pulled me against him like he couldn’t fight it anymore. Like he didn’t want to.
“I’m not like them,” he said. “I won’t lie to you. I won’t promise flowers or safety or peace.”
“I don’t want flowers,” I breathed.
His lips hovered inches from mine. “What do you want?”
“You.”
That one word wrecked him.
He kissed me.
Not soft this time. Not tender. But deep. Hungry. Obsessive.
His hands slid under the hem of his shirt on me. My fingers dug into his bruised back. He lifted me onto the seat of the bike like I weighed nothing, lips never leaving mine.
“Say it again,” he whispered against my throat.
“What?”
“That you want me.”
I moaned the words into his ear, “I want you.”
He pulled back just enough to look at me—wild, wrecked, obsessed.
“You’re not allowed to run anymore, Aria,” he said. “Not from me.”
And somehow… that felt like freedom.
- Writer
