Not Safe But Mine

chapter 3 Liar

The room was deathly silent.

Shawn sat frozen in front of the dead computer screen, the flash drive biting into his palm hard enough to leave a mark. His breathing had gone ragged, uneven, like his lungs had forgotten the rhythm.

He wasn't looking at the monitor anymore.

He wasn't looking at anything.

*"I promise I'll never leave you, Shawn."*

Hope's voice, soft as it always was, curled through his mind like smoke.

Shawn's eyes fell shut.

*"Do you love me as much as I love you?"*

That smile again. That stupid, perfect smile.

*"Shawn... don't leave me."*

His chest caved inward, like something had reached in and squeezed.

*"I want to spend the rest of my life with you."*

His fingers curled tighter around the drive. Sharp plastic edges dug crescents into his skin. He didn't notice.

Then the memory turned.

*"Shawn..."*

The warmth drained out of the voice. What was left was cold. Clinical. A stranger wearing Hope's voice.

*"We should break up."*

His eyes snapped open in the dark room.

"No—"

*"The two of us were never meant to be."*

"No."

*"You're too controlling."*

His breath came faster now, shallow, like he was drowning in air.

*"You're too hot-tempered."*

"I said—" His voice cracked, hoarse, barely his own. "—stop."

The voices didn't listen. They never did.

*"They're right about you."*

*"You'll never change."*

*"I can't spend my life with someone like you."*

Memory after memory slammed into him, each one worse than the last, until he couldn't tell which ones were real and which ones his mind had built out of guilt and repetition. His pulse roared in his ears louder than any of it.

He pressed both palms against his skull, like he could physically hold his own head together.

"Enough."

His voice shook.

"Please."

And then — the words that always came last. The ones that ended everything.

*"I'm leaving."*

*"I'm never coming back."*

Something inside Shawn gave out.

"ARGHHHHHH!"

The scream tore out of him and the whole floor seemed to flinch.

*Crash.* The chair went over backward.

*Bang.* The monitor hit the floor and cracked.

The wooden box flew off the desk, photographs scattering across the room like fallen leaves — Hope laughing, Hope mid-jump, Hope asleep on his shoulder, all of it face-down on the floor now, trampled under whatever was left of Shawn's control.

Glass shattered somewhere. Books slid off shelves in avalanches.

In under a minute, the one spotless room in the entire mansion had been torn apart by a boy who used to smile like that too.

---

Downstairs, the servants had all stopped moving.

Every head turned toward the ceiling, toward the twentieth floor, like they could see through twenty stories of marble and stone.

"What was that?" someone whispered.

Nobody answered. Nobody needed to.

There was only one person in this house capable of shaking it to its foundations with a single sound.

Luis was already moving before he'd fully processed it, documents abandoned mid-page on his desk. His face had gone still in that particular way it only did when something was actually wrong.

"Young Master."

He didn't run. Luis never ran — it wasn't dignified, and it wasn't him. But his footsteps ate up the marble floor faster than they ever had, and by the time he reached the private elevator his jaw was set tight.

The doors closed. The numbers climbed.

Five. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty.

*Ding.*

He was down the hallway in seconds, standing outside the door he'd stood outside a thousand times before. This time, his hand hovered in the air for a second too long before he let it fall.

*Knock. Knock. Knock.*

"Young Master."

Nothing.

He tried again, knuckles harder against the wood.

"Young Master!"

The door opened.

Luis took an involuntary half-step back — not from fear, exactly, but from something close to it.

Shawn stood in the doorway, damp hair falling into his eyes, and for a moment Luis genuinely couldn't tell if he'd been crying or if it was sweat. His eyes were bloodshot, rimmed red, but there was no fire in them.

Just emptiness. The kind that scared people far more than rage ever could.

Neither of them said anything for a long moment.

"...Young Master." Luis' voice dropped, careful now, like he was talking to something that might shatter if he raised it too loud. "Are you alright?"

Shawn looked at him. Through him, really.

No answer came. His face gave nothing away — not pain, not anger, not even acknowledgment that Luis had spoken at all.

Then he stepped back into the room.

*Bang.*

The door shut in Luis' face.

He stood there a moment, staring at the wood grain like it might explain something.

"...Did he," he muttered slowly, "just let me finish a sentence?"

That was the part that unsettled him most. The old Shawn would have snapped something cruel and slammed the door before Luis got two words out. This Shawn hadn't said a single thing.

Silence, from Shawn, had always meant something was very wrong.

Luis exhaled, turned, and walked back toward the elevator — already dreading whatever came next, though he couldn't have said why.

---

Across the city, the evening sun poured gold through the windows of Swiss Pharmacy Hospital, settling over an office far too tidy for the mess going on inside the man sitting in it.

Dr. Hope Wilson scrolled through his phone without really seeing it. Soft, naturally coiled black hair fell over a face that looked gentler than it probably should have, given everything. Thin wire glasses sat neatly on his nose. White coat, white shirt, black trousers — every inch the picture of a composed young doctor.

His desk told the same story. Files stacked at perfect right angles. Pens capped and returned to their holder. Not a single paper out of place.

His mind was the only thing in the room that wasn't in order.

*Knock knock.*

"Come in."

Levite stepped inside — same height as Hope, dark hair combed neat, rectangular glasses catching the light.

"Dr. Hope." He smiled. "There's a patient asking for you specifically."

Hope pinched the bridge of his nose. "Why isn't he seeing someone else?"

"I tried." Levite spread his hands, helpless. "He said he'd rather wait here all night than let anyone but you touch him."

Hope stared at him for a beat, then sighed and pushed back his chair.

"Fine. Let's not make him wait longer than he already has."

---

The consultation didn't take long.

"Thank you so much, Dr. Hope," the elderly patient said, bowing.

Hope offered a smile that looked practiced. "Take the medication on schedule. Don't skip the follow-up."

"I won't."

The old man shuffled off, satisfied, and Hope leaned against the reception desk, unlocking his phone out of habit more than need.

The screen died in his hand.

He stared at it. "...Seriously?"

Levite glanced over. "Something wrong, Dr. Hope?"

"No." The smile came back on cue, easy and hollow. "Nothing's wrong."

He pocketed the phone and walked back to his office, and the second the door clicked shut behind him, the smile fell off his face like it had never been there.

He dragged a hand through his hair.

"Get yourself together."

He plugged the phone into the charger — five percent, barely alive — and picked up a medical journal, hoping the words would hold his attention long enough to drown everything else out.

They didn't. He read the same line three times and understood none of it. Set it down. Reached for a patient file instead. Same result.

"...Hopeless." He laughed at himself, quiet and bitter, and the word landed heavier than he meant it to.

He stood. Paced. One lap around the office. Two. Three. His heart refused to slow no matter how many times his feet crossed the same stretch of floor.

His eyes landed on a blank sheet of paper on the desk.

Without really deciding to, he folded it. Then another sheet. Then another, until a small fleet of paper airplanes littered the floor around his chair — something to do with his hands while his mind did whatever it wanted.

He looked at the mess and almost laughed again. "...What am I even doing?"

The phone: still five percent.

He closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the chair, just for a moment. Just to breathe.

"I just need a few minutes."

But the past didn't care what he needed.

It came looking for him anyway.