Page 16 of Cruel Obsession

I can’t lose him.

The thought loops, relentless.

Mom died when Debra and I were eight. Also cancer. I remember pieces—her perfume, the way she’d braid our hair, her laugh—but mostly I remember the hole she left. The way Dad tried to fill it, but couldn’t. The way he held us at night when we cried and pretended he wasn’t crying too.

Then Debra.

God, Debra.

Six years of searching. Six years of wondering if she’s alive, if she’s scared, if she thinks about me. Six years of guilt eating me from the inside because the last words I said to her were:Then leave.

And now… Dad.

At twenty-four, I’ll have no one.

The sobs come harder. I can’t catch my breath. Can’t think. My chest heaves and my throat burns and I taste salt and snot and I don’t care.

My hand moves without permission, reaching for my phone. I scroll to the D’s. Find her name.

Debra - Mobile

I stare at it. My thumb hovers over the call button.

I do this sometimes. When things get too heavy. When I need to hear her voice, even if it’s just the voicemail message she recorded six years ago.Hey, it’s Debra. Leave a message or don’t. Whatever.

I never leave messages.

But I listen. Just to remember what she sounded like.

Today I can’t do it.

I lock the phone and press my forehead to the steering wheel.

The tears keep coming.

I don’t know how long I sit there. Could be five minutes. Could be thirty. Time stops meaning anything when you’re breaking apart.

Eventually, the sobs slow. My breathing evens out. My hands stop shaking.

I straighten up, wiping my face with my sleeve. I have to pull myself together, be strong for him. This isn’t a time for hysterics.

My father needs me.

Chapter Five

Arkady

The contract in front of me is a blur of legal jargon I stopped reading ten minutes ago. My eyes keep losing focus, drifting from the words to the space beyond them wheresheexists—vivid and unshakeable.

Three days.

Seventy-two hours since I walked out of that ceremony, and I can still see her. The registrar. The way her throat had flushed when the fabric split. The flesh of her breast spilling free, pale and soft against black silk. The mortified panic in her eyes before she’d fled.

And the way she’d come back.

That’s the part that won’t leave me alone. She could have stayed hidden. Could have sent someone else to finish the ceremony. But she’d wrapped herself in that pathetic scarf and returned to do her job, standing there with her chin up while every eye in the room tracked her movements.

Including mine.