#1 | The Aftermath - Phantom Rider Series

#31 | It's Over!

Mila's POV - Leipzig, Germany

I got home, he was already awake. Thank God in one piece. I looked at him standing next to the river. He smiled at me. He was happy, and it broke me. I tried to smile back, but my eyes turned red, and I felt my neck tense. He caught my emotion right away. He always did notice everything about me.

"Come here." He looked at me with such gentle eyes. "Just come here."

He stretched his arms towards me. I hesitated. Somehow, him looking at me like that scared me now more than when he held a gun to my head.

"Don't be scared." He took a step closer to me.

I slowly walked a step towards him. He walked closer to me. I mirrored his movements, unable to make decisions by myself. I just did what he did until our bodies met.

He wrapped his long arms around me, pushing me close to his heart. I leaned my head on his chest and listened to his heart beating. He had no idea what it meant to me to hear that sound.

He said nothing. I said nothing. I felt like crying, but tears didn't come. Time stopped, and I felt something I had never felt in my life before – ease, almost something you feel last second before you let your last breath out.

He pulled me closer in his arms. It is always like that – you pull someone a little bit closer before you let them go. Forever.

I didn't want to let go.

"I don't want to go home," I whispered.

"You are home. You don't have to go anywhere. Your home is with me." His voice sounded a little bit raspy.

Then all the emotion I had been holding in, pushing down, plugging away, came to the surface. Tears started flooding my cheeks; I could taste them on my lips.

He looked at me with the most caring look a man can ever have. He slowly brushed a teardrop from my lip, leaving his finger just there, hesitating. Then he slowly led my lips closer to his. Our lips touched in an almost imperceptible kiss. It was so gentle and slow that I could feel every movement of his lips as if it were our souls kissing, not just bodies. Our noses touched as we breathed each other's air. My head was dizzy, my legs body shaky.

"Please don't let me go." I was afraid again, to lose my balance, to suffocate, to fall, to wake up from this moment. This can't be real.

He felt my fear. "I will protect you, I promise." He promised something he cannot fulfil. No one can protect me from who I am, where I come from, what I have done.

I knew this was our last time together. I couldn't tell him. I was a coward, and I was selfish. I didn't want to take this moment away from myself. Not just yet. I wasn't ready to let him go. I would rather kill myself now than let him go. All I wished for was for time to slow down just enough so I could memorize everything about him, to keep it forever in my locked heart. Because the second he lets me go and I leave, no one will ever unlock my heart. There is just one key, and I hid it in him.

I tried to be strong. I tried so fucking hard not to show him what I was feeling. But all I wanted to do was tell him everything, take our fucking guns, and make a massacre, kill every single one of them. Starting with Matt and finishing off with my father. Rage, hate, and adrenaline boiled inside of me, mixing with love, pain, and longing for happiness. I will tell him... shit, I can't. I'll kill him if I do.

He breathed into my hair, still holding me close. At that moment, I decided I would do what Victor told me to do, but I would find a way later to fix all of it. I don't care how long it takes - weeks, months, years. I will come back, and when I do, the world will fall before me, begging for forgiveness.

Once time was up, I kissed him goodbye, sneaked away through house back door and run to closest highway, where black van was already waiting for me.