Page 63 of Break Me Apart
“That is chilli.”
“Same thing.” He shakes his head, but he’s still holding my hand. We reach the hotel, and Ari is still half-eating his kebab, his fingers sticky with garlic sauce. The lift ride is quiet, just the hum of cables and our reflections staring back at us. We look a mess.
In the room, I drop the remaining food on the desk and immediately start stripping layers off like I’m shedding skin.
The bathroom light is too bright at first. I blink at my own reflection and wince. I step into the shower, and Ari steps in behind me. He reaches past me to turn the shower on. The steam fills the space quickly, curling against the mirror, and we step under it together without even thinking. The water is almost painfully hot, and it feels incredible. Ari takes the bottle of soap from my hand and tips my chin up slightly.
“Stand still.”
“Yes, sir.” He ignores that, lathers his hands, and starts working the soap into my hair, slow and methodical. It’s oddly soothing. His fingers slide down the back of my neck, over my shoulders, rinsing away the sweat and smoke from the warehouse.
“You’re very domestic when you want to be,” I mumble.
“I’m practical.”
“You’re washing my hair.” I point out. Instead of answering, he leans in and kisses me. The water runs over us until we’re both too tired to stand upright without leaning. Eventually, he turns it off, and we towel off in a mess of elbows and damp skin. I nearly trip over the bathmat, and Ari steadies me without comment, saving my face from hitting the sink.
Back in the bedroom, we don’t even bother with clothes. I drop onto the mattress face-first and groan. “I’m never moving again.” Ari settles behind me a few seconds later, his arm sliding around my waist, pulling my back againsthis chest, his hand resting flat against my stomach. “I’m glad we came,” I mumble sleepily, already half gone.
“Me too,” he whispers against the back of my neck, his grip tightening slightly as sleep drags us under.
Full, clean, andstupidly happy.
EIGHTEEN
ARSENY
After the first morning of waking up in Amsterdam, the days begin to blur and go by too fast. We mostly wake late, when light spills too brightly through the curtains. Caiden insists on coffee immediately, as though survival depends on it.
He talks more here, I’ve noticed. Not constantly, but freely. Stories slip out of him without him thinking — small things about home, about training disasters, about people I have never met but begin to recognise through repetition. I listen more than I speak, watching how his expressions shift when he forgets to guard them.
He laughs easily and what surprises me more than anything else is that I love him even more like this.
Despite the amount of talking.
We walk through the streets without a destination in mind. Streets fold into canals, canals into narrow bridges crowded with flowers and bicycles chained together in chaotic order. The air smells like water, bread, and smoke drifting from cafés that spill onto the pavement.
A man kisses another man outside a bakery while locking his bike. Two women walk past holding hands, arguing softly about directions. A couple sits on a bench sharing headphones, foreheads almost touching without hesitation, and the lack of reaction from everyone else still unsettles me slightly. No tension or evaluation ishappening. The absence of danger unsettles me almost as much as danger would.
Caiden notices my attention lingering and nudges my shoulder. “You’re staring,” he says, amused. I shake my head but say nothing. Explaining would require admitting how foreign this feels — a world where affection doesn’t demand secrecy or consequence.
Later, in yet another museum, neither of us truly understands. He stands beside me studying a painting with exaggerated seriousness before whispering, “I think it’s upside down.”
“It is abstract,” I reply.
“That means they forgot how to finish it,” he says, making me laugh out loud. The sound surprises both of us when it escapes.
We eat constantly in small cafés, street stalls, and places chosen at random because the windows look welcoming. Caiden insists on trying everything. I suspect half of it is purely to watch my reaction.
“You cannot judge an entire country’s cuisine based on one suspicious pastry,” he tells me after I decline a second bite of something aggressively sweet.
I say that I absolutely can while he grins at me like victory has been achieved regardless.
These moments accumulate quietly — sitting across from him while rain taps against glass, walking shoulder to shoulder along water that reflects the sky like polished metal, conversations that drift without purpose. Nothinggroundbreaking happens, and yet something fundamental shifts. I begin imagining continuity. Not just visits or stolen time.
A real life.
The thought sneaks up on me cautiously, as if testing whether it will be rejected, but I don’t push it away.
