Watching the trees streak past like dark shadows torn loose from the roadside, Ginevra finally realized she was driving too fast.
She drew in a long breath, forced it down into her chest, and held it there—held it like a weight—until the restless violence in her blood began to loosen its grip. She had to calm herself. She had to.
Just moments ago, the second she stepped into Golden Earth, she'd seen her—her—in that red dress, both hands braced on the bar as she leaned forward. For a heartbeat, Ginevra's first feeling hadn't even been anger. It had been something smaller, sharper: displeasure. A quiet, cold disapproval at the fact that Jayna was drunk at all.
And then the stranger had reached for her.
That was when the beast inside her—old, patient, half-feral—had surged up as if it had been waiting for an excuse all these years. A single touch. A single hand. And she'd felt the sick, immediate impulse to tear.
If she hadn't caught herself—if her body hadn't remembered, at the last second, that she was standing in a room full of witnesses—she would have snapped the man's wrist without thinking.
Ginevra drove with one hand on the wheel, eyes fixed on the road ahead. Her expression was still, almost blank, but the tendons in her jaw were tight.
After all these years… she hadn't reacted like that in a long time.
Then, from the passenger seat, came a soft murmur.
Barely a sound—more like a breath turning into a word.
Ginevra's whole body tensed. Instinct took over. She hit the brakes.
The car lurched to a stop, sharp and sudden. The only reason it didn't become a disaster was because Jayna was belted in—she shifted from the impact but didn't slam forward.
Ginevra exhaled shakily, then reached over, careful now, and adjusted Jayna's posture so her neck wouldn't tilt at an awkward angle. The heater was already turned up, but cold still lived in the night air, seeping through glass and metal. She reached into the back and pulled out a blanket, spreading it over Jayna as if she were laying snow over a fire to keep it from going out.
In her sleep, Jayna shifted, letting out a small, satisfied hum.
Her lips parted slightly—soft, faintly curved in a dreamlike smile—and under the pale wash of moonlight, she looked… devastating. The kind of beautiful that didn't feel real. The kind of beautiful that made you forget to breathe.
Ginevra stared.
Her fingers lifted on their own, betraying her. She used the tips of them to brush aside the loose strands of hair clinging to Jayna's lashes. The movement was so light it barely disturbed the air.
As if one wrong motion would shatter her.
"I missed you," Ginevra whispered, voice almost swallowed by the car's quiet. "Do you know that?"
Her eyes were dark with something bottomless—something that didn't have a clean name.
And then she forced her hand back. Forced her gaze forward. Started the car again, steadying her breathing as she drove on.
By the time they reached home, it was already past two in the morning.
Ginevra had intended to wake Jayna gently—intended to guide her into the elevator, to keep everything polite and distant and controlled.
But Jayna didn't wake.
And Ginevra couldn't bring herself to shake her.
So she slipped an arm beneath Jayna's knees and the other around her back, and lifted her into her arms.
Jayna wasn't heavy. Not even close. Ginevra carried her with an ease that almost frightened her—frightened her because the ease came from familiarity, from some deep memory of holding this person in her mind for so many years that her body acted as if it had done it before.
She felt, with a slow ache, that Jayna was thinner than she remembered.
Is it the industry? The dieting, the discipline, the ways the world demands women shrink until they're easier to consume?
The thought tightened something in her chest. A tenderness, bitter and sharp.
At the door, while Ginevra searched for her keys, Jayna shifted in her sleep and—without thinking, without waking—looped both arms around Ginevra's neck. She nuzzled into the hollow of her throat and let out a sound of comfort that was half-sigh, half-moan.
Ginevra went still.
Her pulse thudded once, hard enough to make her dizzy.
She didn't pry Jayna off.
She stepped inside, closed the door quietly behind them, and carried Jayna to the bed as if she were carrying something sacred—something that would bruise if set down too roughly.
She removed Jayna's heels first.
Only then did she see the damage: the red rawness at the back of Jayna's foot, the skin rubbed open where the shoe had bitten into her. The sight made Ginevra's throat tighten with helpless anger.
Even now.
Even after all this time.
You still don't know how to protect yourself.
She found her medical kit, sat at the edge of the bed, and swabbed the scraped skin with disinfectant.
Jayna frowned in her sleep.
"Mm… hurts," she mumbled, displeased, and reflexively kicked at Ginevra.
Ginevra didn't react. She just leaned closer, gentle and steady, and covered the wound with a bandage. Then, as if apologizing to the bruised flesh, she rubbed Jayna's toe softly until the tension eased from her sleeping face.
The scent of Jayna's shower gel rose around them—floral, clean, faintly sweet.
And yet, the moment Ginevra remembered where she'd been tonight—what could have happened—her brows drew together, her expression cooling again.
She boiled water. Soaked a towel. Wiped Jayna down carefully, as if washing away the night, as if erasing every hand that wasn't hers.
Then—
When she reached Jayna's wrist, she stopped.
Her breath caught.
There, against Jayna's skin, was a bracelet.
Old. Slightly worn. The metal no longer as bright as it once was.
But unmistakable.
For a long time, Ginevra couldn't move.
Eleven years collapsed in on her like a wave. Her eyes stung. She lifted a hand and pressed the side of her knuckle against the corner of her eye—wiping the wetness away quickly, as if she could deny it.
She wrung out the towel and continued, even gentler now, every motion deliberate, restrained, reverent.
Jayna, asleep, knew none of it.
She only seemed to sink deeper into comfort, as if she'd fallen into the center of a huge, soft cloud of cotton candy—warm, sweet air everywhere, a safety she didn't want to leave. Her face loosened. Her lips curved.
In sleep, Jayna looked innocent.
In sleep, she looked like she belonged to a world where nothing had ever taken her away.
Under the moonlight, Ginevra gazed down at her.
This person she'd waited for. This person she'd mourned. This person she'd painted in her mind, again and again, through every year she wasn't there—trying to imagine how her face would change, what age would do to her smile.
None of her imagined brushstrokes had captured the truth.
Because the thing she most wanted—the thing she most craved—was not simply to see her.
It was the unbearable fact of her realness.
Jayna was here.
Sleeping in her bed.
Not a dream.
Not a phantom.
Not a memory.
Something living, warm, within reach.
Ginevra's vision blurred.
For eleven years, she'd locked away so many emotions that they had turned dense and poisonous in the dark. Now, with Jayna's breathing filling the room, they rose at once—grief, longing, relief, rage, devotion—too much to hold.
She stared.
And she wanted—so badly it hurt—to lean down and kiss her awake.
To press her mouth to Jayna's lips and pull her out of sleep, to hear her say her name, to know she could.
She had always known what she felt.
This love that should not exist.
This hunger that had been buried so long it had become part of her bones.
The longer she buried it…
the deeper it grew.
In the end, she didn't touch her.
She simply looked—looked until her gaze felt like hands, sculpting the outline of Jayna's face over and over, carving it into her heart where it already lived.
She tucked the blanket around Jayna, adjusted her into a healthier position, then switched off the bedside light.
And when she finally stepped away, she did it like someone tearing herself from a fire.
She draped a coat over her shoulders and went out onto the balcony.
She lit a cigarette.
She didn't even like smoking. The scent clung to fabric and hair, bitter and ugly. But on the nights when she was most suffocated—most raw—this was the one thing that could keep her alert, like a cold compress pressed to the swelling.
She wasn't sleepy.
The winter wind slapped her face awake, sharper with each breath.
She'd forgotten how to sleep long ago. There were days when she could sit on the couch for hours without moving, waiting for something she didn't have the right to wait for.
Waiting was addictive.
Waiting was a disease.
Ginevra crushed the cigarette out and let the last thread of smoke leave her lips.
She shook her head and gave a quiet, bitter laugh.
Morning arrived like a hush.
Soft sunlight poured across the bed, gilding the sheets, falling over the sleeping girl there as if she were something angelic.
Jayna frowned, turned over.
She didn't want to wake. Not yet.
The mattress was too soft, too sweetly comfortable—like being held. She shifted again, desperate to steal even one more minute.
Then the scent reached her.
A scent so familiar it stabbed straight through her.
Clean, faintly cool—almost medicinal.
A scent that belonged to only one person.
Ginevra Volkova—?
Jayna jolted awake.
She sat up slowly, the headache of last night's drinking punching through her skull. She pressed her fingers to her temple, eyes wide, scanning the room.
This wasn't her home.
The realization landed like a stone.
She threw the blanket back and started to stand—
And froze.
She was wearing a sleep dress.
Black.
Not hers. Absolutely not.
Jayna stared down at herself in alarm, then lifted a hand to touch her shoulder, her thigh—
Her skin felt… clean. As if someone had wiped her down with warm towels. And her body carried the scent of the room's owner, clinging to her like an invisible blanket.
Then she noticed her ankle.
A bandage.
Her confusion deepened, the nerves rising fast.
"What—what is going on…?"
She slipped into her slippers and began to walk through the apartment.
It was immaculate.
The kind of home that belonged to someone with a precise, almost punishing sense of order. Minimalist, cool-toned, calm in a way that bordered on severe. Every surface wiped spotless. Every object placed with intention. Even the small potted plants on the balcony were surrounded by clean space, tidy soil, no stray leaves.
Jayna stepped out onto the balcony.
And her breath caught.
There were plants there that she recognized—still not blooming, but she knew what they were.
Daisies.
Her favorite.
She stared at them, heart thudding.
Her mind immediately offered her an answer.
And she immediately rejected it.
Because she was afraid to turn and be disappointed. Afraid it was a coincidence. Afraid it would break her.
No. She needed her phone. She needed facts. She needed to know what happened.
She remembered drinking with Beau. Remembered the bar, the whiskey, the blur.
After that—nothing.
She should have been taken by Tom. Or stayed in Beau's hotel.
So why was she here?
Jayna walked back inside and found her handbag hanging neatly on the coat rack.
She grabbed it, fumbled out her phone—
Dead.
Of course.
She pressed the power button, waited, stomach twisting. When the screen lit up, notifications flooded in like an avalanche.
Messages. Missed calls.
Tom. Luke Mercer. Beau.
Her phone had been blown up.
She didn't call anyone yet. Instead, she scrolled quickly through messages, trying to piece together what she'd lost. Tom's texts shifted from worried to resigned—telling her to rest when he realized she was safe.
Luke's were all nosy, delighted, way too entertained.
Sophie asked where she'd gone.
And Beau—
Beau, that absolute menace—
had texted her:(Sweetheart's grown up. Time to stop starving yourself. Don't be too intense—tomorrow it'll hurt.)
Jayna stared at it, then groaned, pressing her palm to her forehead.
What the hell had she said to him last night?
Dear God.
She swore she would never—never—drink like that again.
She was parched, throat dry as paper. She stumbled toward the dining area, searching for water, still half-dazed.
Then she stopped.
In the center of the table, under a wrought-iron glass cover, was breakfast—laid out neatly, quietly, as if prepared by someone who didn't want to wake her.
A bowl of kasha.
Eggs and ham.
A small plate of delicate side dishes.
All in simple white ceramic.
Jayna stood there, stunned.
Her gaze fell on a note beside it—handwriting clean, sharp, elegant.
(There's a cup of honey water in the insulated container in the kitchen—good for a hangover. If the food gets cold, you can heat it.)
No name.
No signature.
None needed.
Even if a hundred years passed, Jayna would know that handwriting.
Her face warmed rapidly, color rushing up her throat and into her cheeks, as if her blood had been set on fire.
She didn't know what to do with herself.
Joy, disbelief, confusion, anxiety—everything crowded into her mind at once, loud and chaotic.
She grabbed the honey water and drank in small gulps.
It was perfect.
Exactly the sweetness she liked.
That should have calmed her.
It didn't.
Because she still couldn't remember last night.
She couldn't remember coming here.
And the worst part—the part that made her want to crawl under the table and never emerge—
was that she had no idea what she'd done in front of Ginevra.
Had she embarrassed herself?
Had she cried?
Had she thrown up?
Please, no. Please, God, no.
Had she done something that made Ginevra regret helping her?
This—this wasn't how she'd imagined their second meeting as adults.
Not like this.
Not drunken and helpless and humiliating.
Jayna leaned her forehead against the wall, half groaning, half whimpering, tapping it lightly like it could knock the missing memory back into place.
"It's so mortifying," she whispered, voice cracking with frantic embarrassment. "Just kill me… I'm begging… ugh…"
She'd always thought she'd be the one to knock on Ginevra's door someday—prepared, radiant, irresistible in the way she'd learned to be.
She'd planned a hundred versions of herself. A hundred perfect entrances.
Not… this.
Not waking up in her sleepwear, in her apartment, with daisies on the balcony and honey water waiting in the kitchen—
and no idea what it had cost Ginevra to bring her home.