The Security You Never Gave Me

The auto-reply came back instantly, same as always.

【Baby, I'll always make you feel safe. Be careful on the road.】

In that moment, my disappointment in Leopold bottomed out into something absolute.

My limbs locked up, rigid and beyond my control.

My heart kept stalling, then racing, stalling, then racing.

The doctor put me straight on electroshock, the fastest option they had.

Voltage tore through my body. I convulsed, gagging, fighting the urge to vomit.

What nobody knew was that the window across from this treatment room faced the Four Seasons. The same hotel his colleague had shared her location from.

They were probably in there right now, tangled up in each other.

The agony of the shocks sent memories flashing through my skull.

A year ago, Leopold and I met in an online game.

We clicked instantly, and before long we wanted to meet in person.

On the way to see him, I was grabbed by strangers and locked in a pitch-black room for an entire day and night.

Cold and terror ate through every nerve I had.

By the time I got out, I was hollowed. My sense of safety was gone, completely gone.

I kept seeing that dark, damp room. The nightmares came every night.

It was a shadow I could never shake.

Leopold didn't know what had happened to me. He messaged me online, frustrated.

“First time meeting up and you stood me up?”

“I waited for you all afternoon.”

Seeing how hurt he looked, I told him everything about the abduction.

I tried to keep it light, almost joking. I said that on my way to see him, disaster had found me instead. That I'd lost all sense of security, that nightmares plagued me every night, that I was on anti-anxiety medication now.

After hearing all of that, Leopold vanished.

I called him, texted him, tried reaching him through the game.

He was gone. Like he'd dissolved off the face of the earth. I couldn't sit still, couldn't think straight, my heart hammering so hard it hurt. I curled into myself and hid in the safest corner I could find.

Three days. No food, no water, no sleep. My condition spiraled.

On the third day, Leopold stumbled back to me.

It was the first time we'd met in person. He smelled like blood.

His arms, his back, his thighs. All wounded.

Some of the gashes had split open to the bone.

I grabbed his arms, crying.：“What happened?”

“How are you hurt this badly?”

He was young, over six feet tall, with a presence that photographs hadn't captured. He was even better-looking than he'd been on our video calls.

Battered like that, he had a ruined beauty to him. I fell for him almost on sight.

Leopold smiled and rested his chin on my shoulder.

His warm breath brushed across my cheek.

“It's nothing. I tracked down the people who took you and beat the hell out of them. Payback.”

My heart raced, but not the way it did during an episode. This was something else entirely.

A pull so fierce it wrecked me. I fell in love with him right there, beyond saving.

I threw my arms around him, choking on my own voice.

“Thank you. Thank you.”

After the kidnapping, I'd tried everything. Nothing worked. The people who did it apologized and walked away free.

I never expected that Leopold, someone I'd only ever known online, would be the one to fight for me.

He brushed his thumb across my eyelids, wiping the tears away, half-laughing, half-exasperated.：“Silly girl. What are you thanking me for?”

“You said you don't feel safe. From now on, I'll be your safety.”

“Just stay with me. Whenever you need me, I'll be there.”

In that moment, I felt more secure than I ever had in my life. A fullness I'd never known.

It never crossed my mind that the whole time he was with me, he'd been involved with his colleague.

Pledging loyalty to me with one breath, wrapped around her with the next.

Those fragments of memory cut deeper than anything the electricity had done to my body.

By the time I opened my eyes again, it was evening.

My phone rang. I lifted my hand, weak, and tapped to answer.

“Hey, babe. Are you away on a business trip?”