Page 95 of The Glass Empire
He was gone.
And I had let him go.
I walked to the window and looked out at the driveway. The gate was open, the road dark, the world beyond the mansion waiting for someone brave enough to leave.
I wasn't brave enough.
I was just a girl who'd been broken by three men and didn't know how to put herself back together.
Aleksander found me in Gabriel's room.
He didn't say anything. He just stood in the doorway and watched me, his grey eyes unreadable.
"He's gone," I said.
"I know."
"You knew he was going to leave?"
"He told me this morning."
"And you let him go?"
"He's a grown man. He's not a prisoner." Aleksander walked into the room, stopping beside me at the window. "He's been wanting to leave for years. I'm surprised it took this long."
"Did he tell you about me? About his offer?"
"Yes."
"And you still let him go?"
"I'm not going to stop someone from trying to save you, Monika. Even if I know it won't work."
I turned to look at him. His face was calm, controlled, the mask he wore when he didn't want to show what he was feeling.
"How do you know it won't work?"
"Because you're still here." He reached out and touched my face, his fingers tracing the line of my jaw. "If you wanted to leave, you would have gone with him. But you didn't. You stayed. With me."
"Maybe I'm just too tired."
"Maybe." He leaned in, his lips brushing my forehead. "Or maybe you're exactly where you're supposed to be."
I didn't argue. I didn't have the strength.
That night, I lay in my bed and stared at the ceiling.
The room was empty without Gabriel's presence. The bed was too big, the sheets too cold, the silence too loud. I closed my eyes and saw his face—the way he'd looked at me in the greenhouse, the tears on his cheeks, the desperate hope in his eyes.
He'd asked me to leave with him.
He'd offered me a life—a real life, one that wasn't built on blood and cages and men who loved me the wrong way.
And I'd said no.
Because I was already theirs.
Because I didn't know how to be only one person's anymore.
