Chapter 6
1140 Words
Dante’s P.O.V
She ran.
Out the room. Down the stairs. Past the dorm entrance.
Like I was the monster she’d always feared. Like I was the threat she never expected to love.
I chased her.
I didn’t think—I couldn’t think. The second she bolted, my instincts took over. I knew that run. The desperate kind. The kind that said goodbye without saying a word.
The sound of her footsteps echoed like bullets in my ears, stabbing into the part of me that had finally started to breathe again. The part that had dared to hope.
The sight of her fleeing, like I was the villain they warned her about, ignited something dangerous in me. My heart thundered, rage boiling under my skin. Rage that she’d run from me. Rage that she’d leave me behind—again. Rage that I was losing her when I had only just found her again.
She darted past Emma and Lucas who had just stepped out of their car, their faces frozen with confusion and shock. Emma reached out instinctively, but Selene didn’t stop. She didn’t even glance at them. Lucas started to say something, but I couldn’t hear it over the roaring in my ears.
But I didn’t stop. I wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t lose her again.
Not now.
I caught her halfway across the quad. Her hair flew behind her like wildfire, her breaths coming in ragged bursts. I didn’t call her name—I didn’t beg. I wrapped my arms around her waist from behind and lifted her clean off the ground.
She screamed.
Kicked.
Fought me like I was the devil himself.
“No! Let me go!” she shrieked, fists pounding into my chest, her nails scraping at my forearms, her voice shattering something inside me.
But I didn’t let go. I couldn’t. My grip only tightened.
“You’re not leaving me,” I growled into her ear. “Not again.”
She thrashed in my arms like she could somehow break free, like I wasn’t twice her size and completely unhinged at the thought of her gone.
She was mine.
Always had been. Always would be.
I carried her back across the lawn like a man possessed. Her screams echoed into the night, and I didn’t care who heard them. All that mattered was that she was in my arms. Safe. Close.
Even if she hated me for it.
She fought me all the way to the dorm, clawing, twisting, trying to get free. Every step she resisted made my blood thrum harder.
Emma and Lucas were already inside, faces pale, eyes wide, waiting for answers I wasn’t ready—or willing—to give. But I didn’t stop to explain. I didn’t stop to think. I kicked the door shut behind me and strode into the room like a storm.
And dropped her onto the bed like she weighed nothing.
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Selene’s P.O.V
I couldn’t breathe.
The air felt thick, like I was drowning in it. The walls spun. My pulse pounded in my ears. My skin burned where he touched me.
His words played over and over in my head like a broken record.
I love you.
That wasn’t part of my plan. None of this was.
I had prepared myself for pain. For danger. For walking away. I’d trained my heart to go numb. I’d reminded myself over and over that Dante Salvatore was poison in a suit—beautiful and lethal.
But not love.
Not this brutal, overwhelming thing that seeped into my veins and threatened to destroy every defense I had built.
He straddled me on the bed, his weight heavy over mine. He held my wrists down against the mattress, his body locking mine in place like I was his prisoner—and in a way, I was.
Emma and Lucas were there. Watching from the corner, silent. Pale.
I cared. I cared that they saw this. That they saw how powerless I felt under him. That they saw how easily he shattered me.
But he didn’t care at all.
He watched me struggle with dark, storm-filled eyes. Waited, silent, as I kicked, thrashed, and tried to throw him off me. But my body was already losing the fight. Exhaustion crept in fast—like a tide determined to drown me.
When I finally collapsed beneath him, lungs heaving, wrists shaking in his hands, he leaned closer. His face hovered inches from mine, jaw tense, lips parted as if the words burned his tongue.
“I love you,” he said again, voice low and unyielding. “And just so you know—you can’t escape me. I’ll always chase you.”
His voice was a blade. His eyes, a wildfire.
And the way he said it—like it was a vow. Like it was a damn threat wrapped in a promise—I broke.
The tears came before I could stop them. Hot. Loud. Ugly.
I hadn’t cried in seven years.Not after my parents died and I was left with an uncle that didn't give a s**t about what happened to me.
But I cried now.
Because love wasn’t supposed to look like this. It wasn’t supposed to be a war zone. It wasn’t supposed to pin you down and refuse to let go. It wasn’t supposed to strip you bare in front of your friends and call it devotion.
“I don’t want it,” I sobbed, voice cracking like dry glass. “I don’t want any of it.”
His eyes didn’t soften. His grip didn’t loosen. But something shifted in his expression—a flicker of pain. Or maybe guilt.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t argue. He just moved off me slowly, as if afraid I might disappear again if he did it too fast.
Then he pulled me into his chest.
Not forcefully this time. Not like before.
He held me like I was made of glass. Like he knew he’d already broken something in me. Like he didn’t know how to fix it but didn’t want to let me go anyway.
I sobbed into his shirt, the fabric soaking through. My body shook against him, every breath rattling like a broken engine.
Emma stood frozen across the room. Lucas looked like he didn’t know whether to intervene or walk out.
But Dante didn’t let me go.
He whispered something I didn’t quite hear—something soft, foreign, in Italian maybe. His hand moved up my back in slow strokes, calming, steady, like he was trying to hold me together with touch alone.
And I cried until the storm passed.
Until my voice gave out.
Until I was too tired to hate him.
Until sleep took me.
Wrapped in his arms, in his scent, in the wreckage of everything I swore I’d never feel again.
- Writer
