What Survives

"I didn't hire him to protect my body. I hired him because I couldn't survive another night alone."

Azalea-
I had everything money could offer. But the nights were still too long, and the silence too loud.

They say grief fades. It doesn't. It lingers-quiet and cold. Haunted by my past and desperate not to be alone, I hired Alek: a cold, ex-military bodyguard with scars deeper than his silence.

He doesn't speak much. He doesn't smile.
But he listens. He stays.
I didn't expect the man behind the silence to feel like home.

And that was enough... until it wasn't.
Until I started getting greedy.

Alek-
I've seen war. Death. Hell on Earth.
But nothing wrecked me like the soft-eyed girl who looked at me like I wasn't broken.

I told myself I'd keep it professional. She was just another job.
But the truth? I never stood a chance.

The more I watched her quietly carry the weight of the world-
The more I wanted to carry it with her.

Azalea is the kind of light you don't touch when you've lived too long in the dark.
But every time she looked at me... it felt like maybe I didn't have to stay there.

It's not the danger that gets to me.
It's the way she carries it-quiet, alone, like I'm not standing right here.
Like she already knows something I don't.

[On Hiatus]