Max
The quiet click of the apartment door closing behind me felt less like an ending and more like the start of a different kind of confinement. I stripped off my coat, tossing it onto my sofa. My shoulders slumped, the weight of the day's calculated moves pressing down on me. Sofia was still here, a vibrant, unpredictable force simmering beneath the surface of my perfectly curated life.
"Everything alright?" I'd forced out earlier, my voice flat. It was a reflex, a practiced detachment. The truth was, nothing was alright.
Her retort, sharp and laced with pain, had been a direct hit. "You just left me here, without a word, like… like I was an inconvenience."
God, she was right. Every word she'd thrown at me was a truth I'd been desperately trying to bury. The morning after had been a battlefield, alright, but the enemy was myself. The desperate grip I'd held her in, the intoxicating scent that still clung to my senses, had been a moment of fatal weakness. Fatal because it exposed me. It exposed her.
"It was a mistake," I'd said. The words had tasted like ash, a lie I told myself more than her. It wasn't a mistake, not in the intoxicating rush of it. But it was ill-advised. Dangerous. With Mark circling, any deviation from the plan was a liability. Any vulnerability was a weapon he'd wield against me. And Sofia, damn her, was quickly becoming my biggest one.
Her accusations had cut deep. "You're terrified of anything that isn't a calculated move!" She wasn't wrong. My life, even here in college, was a meticulously planned chessboard. Every interaction, every decision, a strategic play. Emotion was a luxury I couldn't afford. It blurred lines, corrupted judgment, and in my world, it could get people killed.
The mention of Mark had twisted a knot in my gut, a familiar cold dread. "Mark isn't just a disgruntled college associate, Sofia. He's… a ghost from my past." The words had been a concession, a truth I hadn't wanted to share. He was more than that. He was a phantom limb, an old wound that never truly healed.
Mark and I had met on campus, two ambitious young men on the cusp of a world waiting to be conquered. We were rivals, then uneasy allies, then something darker. He'd always been ruthless, but a moment, just last year, had solidified the chasm between us. He'd gone too far. He'd tried to silence a former research partner who possessed damaging information about one of my burgeoning campus ventures. That partner wasn't just a source; she was Eleanor, a quiet, brilliant student who had collaborated closely with my economics professor, a woman who had, in her own way, become like a younger sister to me. Mark had almost killed her, leaving her in a coma for weeks, a chilling warning to anyone who dared cross him. I had never forgotten the cold satisfaction in his eyes, the casual brutality of his act. I had buried him professionally within the campus network, thought I'd erased him from our shared landscape. But ghosts, I was learning, had a habit of returning.
And now, here was Sofia, radiating warmth and genuine emotion, cracking through the armor I'd spent years building. The thought of Mark ever getting close to her, of seeing that casual brutality directed at her, made my blood run cold. It was a risk I couldn't afford. Which meant I had to keep her at arm's length. I had to push her away, even as every instinct screamed to pull her closer.
"There is no 'us,' Sofia," I'd growled, the words a self-inflicted wound. It was a lie, a necessary one. Because if there was an "us," then Mark would find it. He would use it. And Sofia would pay the price.
The truth was, the lingering heat from our night was still a potent distraction. Every time I looked at her, I was reminded of the surrender, the vulnerability I had allowed myself to feel, the dangerous connection that had formed. And I needed to sever that connection, or at least suppress it, until Mark was gone.
I knew she had called her sister, Clara, using my phone moments ago. I'd heard the hushed tones of her voice, the careful vagueness she employed. A part of me bristled at the thought of her communicating with the outside world, a potential breach in the carefully constructed wall around her. But another part, a smaller, more human part, understood her desperate need for a lifeline. She was isolated, cut off from her normal life, all under the guise of protection. But it was more than that. It was also about my own desperate need to control this situation, to minimize the damage she could do to my carefully constructed world, and more importantly, the damage Mark could inflict through her.
My next moves were already being laid out. I would be even more distant, more clinical. I would avoid eye contact, keep conversations strictly functional. I would make her feel like an inconvenience, a burden, anything to push her away, to make her resent me. It was a cruel tactic, but a necessary one. If she believed I was cold and unfeeling, if she saw me as the manipulative bastard she accused of being, then she wouldn't be drawn into the perilous orbit of my life. This deliberate act of pushing her away, of crushing the fragile hope I'd seen flicker in her eyes, was a fresh betrayal. But it was for her own good. Or so I told myself, as I turned away from her, the heavy weight of my past, and the dangerous present, pressing down on me. The thought of protecting her, even from myself, was the only thing that made the deliberate cruelty bearable.