A GLIMPSE INTO MY WORLD.
1561 Words
🏑KLAUS'S POV🏑
"Breathe, princess. She will be fine"
I cupped Adriana's face between my palms and forced her to look at me. Her breathing came out unsteady and broken, tears streaming down her face in a way that made me want to make everything right so she'd never cry again. I held her gaze for a moment before bending to grab both our bags and her phone from the library floor and slinging everything over my shoulder.
Then I guided her toward the door.
Theo was still outside the library door. His expression shifted the second he saw Adriana's face, concern replacing the easy grin he'd been wearing earlier.
He opened his mouth but I spoke first.
"Thanks, Theo. I owe you one."
His eyes moved between us before he nodded. "Hope everything's okay."
I gave him a look that said it wasn't and guided Adriana away before he could ask anything else.
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The drive to the hospital blurred into flashing lights and empty streets.
Every few seconds my eyes cut toward Adriana just to make sure she was still with me. At some point her sobs stopped, turned soundless and silent tears took over instead, rolling down her face no matter how many times I told her to stop. She pressed a trembling hand over her mouth like she was trying to hold herself together and failing at it.
That silence was somehow worse than the crying.
"Breathe Ana," I said, my grip tightening around the wheel. "Please."
She tried. I could see her trying.
I reached one hand toward her slowly and the second my fingers grazed hers she flinched back like she'd been burned, her wide eyes snapping to mine almost immediately after, guilt flooding her face.
"Klaus, I—"
"It's fine," I said, pulling my hand back. “I'm sorry."
She turned toward the window and hugged herself and a thousand things clawed through my head at once. Was she pulling away because of Lily? Or because of the library? The memory hit without warning, her hands in my hair, the way she'd said my name like it meant something, and I tightened my jaw and buried it because this wasn't the time and she was falling apart and none of that mattered right now.
Still it sat heavy in my chest the entire drive.
The moment I pulled into the hospital lot she was out of the car before I'd cut the engine, already running toward the entrance. I shut the door and went after her.
The nurse at reception stood when she saw Adriana's face, her eyes dropping briefly to her midsection before sliding toward me with an expression I didn't appreciate.
"We're here for Lily Coleman," I said before she could ask anything.
She typed something and looked up. "Room fifty-five. Last door on the right hallway."
"Thank you," Adriana whispered and was already moving.
I stayed close behind her. By the time we reached the room her whole body was shaking and her hand trembled around the doorknob. I stepped in and took her hand from it and pushed the door open myself.
The room went quiet.
Mrs. Coleman sat beside the bed clutching Lily's hand, tears tracking down her face. Molly and Leticia stood nearby looking wrecked. And in the corner, head buried in his palms, sat a man I recognized to be Adriana's father.
Fred Coleman.
Still in his travel clothes. Shirt creased, jacket thrown across the chair beside him like he'd pulled it off the second he'd arrived. He hadn't even had time to change.
Adriana went completely still.
"Dad."
Her voice cracked on the word and Fred's head came up and he was across the room before she finished saying it, pulling her into him, one hand cradling the back of her head.
"It's okay, baby," he said against her hair. "She's going to be okay."
His hands were shaking.
He was holding his family together while barely holding himself.
Mrs. Coleman looked up then and let out a soft broken sound when she saw Adriana's face. "Oh, sweetheart." She rose from the chair and Adriana moved from her father's arms straight into her mother's and the three of them held each other in the middle of that cold hospital room and something about watching it didn't sit well with me.
Warmth. The kind that fills a room without asking for anything back. One I wasn't used to.
I stepped toward the doorway, pushed my hands into my pockets and stayed out of it because this wasn't mine to be part of.
Molly's eyes found mine across the room.
She held my gaze for a long moment before walking out of the room. I followed and pulled the door shut behind me.
The hallway was quiet when we stepped out. Molly folded her arms across her chest and didn't waste any time.
"Why were you with Ana?"
"Not now, Mol."
"I'm asking now." Her voice sharpened. "You're always around her lately and I don't like it."
I looked at her and said nothing.
"The way you look at her has changed, Klaus."
"And what if it has?"
She went still. Then her expression shifted into something colder than I'd seen from her in a long time.
"I'll kill you," she said, and she meant it.
"Mol—"
"No." She shook her head. "Ana is the best thing in my life. You don't get to ruin her."
A humourless laugh left me. "You really think I'm that bad?"
She looked at me for a long beat before answering. "I think you destroy everything you touch when you stop caring about yourself." She paused. "And that's exactly why you need to stay away from her. She's mine."
Neither of us spoke after that for a while.
Eventually she rubbed her eyes and sighed. "Dad texted. We should go home before he loses his mind."
I glanced once toward Lily's room.
And a part of me wanted to stay here until she came out. To be here to comfort her.
But what if she never came back out? What if she had flinched in the car because she hated me for what happened between us.
And that stayed with me the whole walk back to the car.
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The drive home was wordless.
Molly stared out the window. I kept my eyes on the road and my thoughts somewhere else entirely, turning the same things over and over. The way Adriana had pulled back from my hand in the car. The guilt on her face after. The distance she'd started putting between us the moment the library ended, like it had become something she regretted the second it was over.
My grip pressed harder into the wheel.
"You really like her, don't you?" Molly said, her voice going softer than it had been all evening.
I didn't answer.
Because I wasn't stupid enough to lie to my sister and I wasn't ready to say the truth out loud either.
We pulled into the driveway and Molly exhaled before climbing out.
"Brace yourself," she muttered.
The second I stepped through the front door a sharp slap cracked across my face. My head snapped to the side. Gasps went through the room.
"Robert!" Mom's voice cut across everything.
I turned back toward my father, the taste of blood spreading across my tongue. He was standing in the middle of the sitting room with fury burning in his eyes, and I looked at him and smiled because I knew if I didn't I'd say something that would make this so much worse.
"You enjoy testing me," he said.
"And you enjoy putting your hands on me," I said back.
He stepped forward. "You embarrassed me today. Skipped drills, played like garbage, then disappeared without a word."
"I had somewhere more important to be."
"You think this is something to joke about?" His voice rose. "Do you know what I've given up for your future?"
Something about the word future from his mouth always did the same thing to me. It made me want to laugh and walk away at the same time.
"You're becoming reckless again," he said, and the word again landed the way he knew it would, like a stone dropped into a still room.
Mom went rigid. Molly froze on the staircase.
"You don't get to talk about control," I said.
He ignored it. "Fighting. Losing focus. Disappearing. Acting exactly like you did after—"
"Stop." Mom's voice cracked through the room like a whip.
But Dad kept his eyes on me.
"Murderers don't get the luxury of falling apart, Klaus."
The room went silent.
I stared at him for a long moment. Then I laughed, not because anything was funny but because it was either that or something I'd regret.
"You think I don't know that?" I said. "I pay for it every day. I'm paying for it by dying in my own head every single day."
His face moved. Something crossed it that I'd almost call guilt if I thought he was capable of it.
But I was already done.
I walked past everyone and went upstairs and closed my door and stood in the quiet of my room with the taste of blood still on my lip and only one thing in my head.
Adriana.
- Writer
