It was a pity. The way rain kept assaulting the overworked ground--soil that seemed old and rotten and abandoned like the warehouse standing lone and cold, a distance behind me. There were patches of wildflowers grown a little far away, beneath one of the huge sycamore trees, small and pretty and being battered by the harsh rain.

They were dying.

Dead.

Like Michael.

Cold raindrops plastered strands of my hair to my skin--my face. I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to ward off the cold. The rain. The terror.

He's dead. He's dead. He's dead.

It was too sudden, the alarm consuming my body when the rain stopped, just like that--when I felt a presence right behind me. I turned around too fast, heart racing in terror because what if--

"Alice." It was Ryder. Just him. My gaze darted behind him, found no one, and then noticed the umbrella in his hand--the one he held over me.

It was only now when the onslaught of rain had suddenly stopped that I noticed how horribly I was actually trembling. With cold or shock or pure fear, I wasn't really sure.

Ryder stared down at me, a guarded look in his eyes, the air between us brimming with something unspoken--something violent like an unmistakable click of a gun--something unforgivable--something too shattered.

I swallowed past the tightness in my throat.

"Let's go home." He told me, his voice low--only for my ears. Was there someone else around us? I couldn't look past the rain and the fog. I couldn't even look past the poorly washed blood from his hands--the torn knuckles, the look in his eyes when he'd pulled the--

I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head.

"Querida."

"Why." The word forced past my lips, a little too loud, a little too broken. I squeezed my eyes close until it hurthurthurt before forcing them open and looking at him. "Why did you not listen to me?"

He looked away, jaw clenched.

"Ryder, I needed you to not..." My voice broke. I swallowed. "I needed you to listen to me."

"I do listen to you."

"I needed you to listen to me right then." I snapped, felt my eyes filling up with tears that burned. "You killed...him. You killed Michael."

It was his name alone that instilled fear within me. He wasn't even here--he wasn't here anymore--and yet I was still terrified.

Ryder looked at me, gaze blank, emotionless, guarded. "I'm not going to apologize to you for that."

I blinked furiously. "I don't...Jesus, I don't need an apology, Ryder!" I couldn't believe it. Any of it. "You weren't supposed to kill him. He was..."

"I'm sorry you were there to see it, querida." He stated--repeated. "But I'm not sorry that I killed him."

I could only stare in disbelief.

He tilted the umbrella a little over me, stepping closer, dark brows pulled together in a frown. I inhaled sharply. "I knew I was going to kill him the moment I found out about it, what he was doing to you, what he had done to you. There wasn't going to be anyone stopping me."

"No. Jesus." A soft sob escaped my lips as I brought my fingers to my eyes, scrubbing off the tears that just wouldn't stop. "Ryder, he wasn't going to hurt me again. Please. You can't be--You're not one of those people who hurt others just because they can. You're not evil. I know you're not. But the way you were--he was bleeding so...so much from his stomach. He's not--I know he hurt me, too much, but he still didn't deserve to be killed like that. No one deserves to be tortured like that."

His jaw ticked. He was hearing what I was saying but he wasn't listening to me. I could see it in his eyes--the way they blinked with fury. Fury at this situation. Fury that I wasn't understanding him.

But how could I?

I closed my eyes, felt the wetness trickling down my face, and turned my face skywards. "It makes me sick what you did in there." I whispered to him, because it did. I hated it. I hated it because I was scared of the unhinged look in his eyes, when all he'd wanted was to hurt Michael--terrified of what would happen now.

"You weren't supposed to be there."

"And you would've hid this from me as long as you could've?" I asked, voice raw.

He didn't reply to that.

I shook my head at him, stepping back from him and away from his stupid fucking umbrella. Only that I didn't even make it two steps away before he was covering me with it again--stubborn--stepping closer.

"Stop." I let out sharply, grabbing the umbrella with cold, numb fingers and pushing it towards him, away from me. "Just...stop." I turned around, breath hitching in warning--of what I wasn't sure. I started walking away and the rain kept pouring over me, not sure how to breathe properly. It felt like--It felt like I was choking on air.

I looked up at the same tree I'd been staring at before, for hours--minutes--seconds, I wasn't sure, and stopped to a halt. The dying wildflowers scattered near my feet.

"Mierda," Ryder gritted out from somewhere behind me and I heard a soft thud. I turned around, blinked past the cold water and noticed the umbrella tossed on the muddy ground. Then he was there, right in front of me, blocking any sight of the forlorn scenery behind him. "Why are you upset over that piece of fucking shit? He was a waste. He fucking looked at you wrong back there. He had the fucking nerve to speak your name after all that he did to you."

I gripped my elbows tightly. "I don't care about him."

"Then what the fuck is this?" He demanded, raking his battered hand through his hair. I flinched. "Why do you care--"

"I care." My voice broke--a stupid pathetic attempt to stop the battered feelings inside me, push them inside before they burst open and left me in cracked pieces. "I care about you. I never wanted you to find out about...about this. About Michael and I. You've killed him but it won't fix this. It won't fix me. It won't fix what's already happened."

He stared at me in disbelief. "I didn't fucking off him because I wanted to fix you."

A soft, broken sound escaped me. There was too much blood--ruins--death around us. On him. I can't do this, I wanted to tell him. But I was too cold. I didn't have it in me to say anything anymore. I didn't know how to tell him, how to explain the panicked--desperate--choking feeling inside me. I couldn't breathe because everytime I blinked I could see Michael's body--on the concrete--the blood dripping too fast--the look in his eyes.

I was scared--absolutely terrified by the look in Rafael's eyes. The insistent ringing of his phone. The impending doom that lurked all around this place.

"Querida." He breathed out--his voice a warm beacon that caressed the dark corners of my mind I was losing myself to--shook his head and closed the distance between us. Warm hands cupped my face, fingers curling over my ears, into my hair, and pulled me closer. "How many fucking times do I need to tell you that you are not broken. You're not something to be fucking fixed."

I shook my head. He thumbed off the tears that kept coming. I didn't know how to stop them.

"I know...Fuck, listen to me." His eyes searched mine, fierce and angry and maybe even a little devastated--like the insistent tugging in my chest. Raindrops slid down the ends of his hair, his face, and that too was an agony on its own. "I know you didn't want this. I know that. But it wasn't fucking possible for me to not hurt him. I couldn't, Alice. Do you hear me?"

His eyes, I realized, were telling me--asking me to believe him, the same way the warm grip on my face did. It asked me to believe him.

"You," he said, whispered, angled my face up to his until the pinpoints where he touched me were the only grounding points to my reality. "You mean everything to me, querida. Believe that if you can't believe anything else I say."

I couldn't. Another small sob escaped me and I squeezed my eyes close. Soft, warm lips touched the corner of my eye where one of the tears escaped.

"He hurt you." Ryder whispered, so tense but gentle with me. It devastated me. "He was dead the moment he laid a finger on you. He just didn't know it."

I gripped his drenched shirt in my fingers, shaking my head. He pulled away, just enough for me to open my eyes. "It would've killed me if I'd had let that fucker roam free after he got out from that hospital."

And it was just that--the plain sincerity of that statement. The simple way he said it, like he literally meant it. Like it actually would've killed him.

"Ryder."

"I will ask you for forgiveness every minute of my life for making you watch it, for anything else." He added, a deep earnestness in his eyes, in the way he held me. Because he doesn't lie to you. "But I will never be sorry for killing him."

I stared up at him, at the seconds that ticked by in that awful, painful silence. You mean everything to me too.

"Ryder."

He stared at me, a beat too long. Then he leaned close again.

"Querida." He whispered, then pressed his lips where a wayward tear rolled down my jaw. "Do you know what it means?"

I inhaled shakily, afraid to let go of him.

"Dearest." He told me, then looked up until all I could focus on--all I knew was the blue of his eyes. "You are very dear to me, Alice. Please know that I will do anything, that I will kill again without a second thought, to make sure you are safe."

And it hit me then--the entirety of the situation. Of this. Of what had happened.

Michael was dead.

The paranoia. The unshakeable fear. The knowing that he would hurt me again. The fear of seeing him again, because I eventually always did in all the past years.

None of that would happen now.

I was only left with the terrifying memories.

"He will not hurt you again." He added.

I nodded, then nodded again, because it was hitting me now, too fast and too sudden--it was a realization too heavy with something sickening like relief. Crying, I threw my arms around his neck, holding onto him, sobbing until he held me back. Until something in my world felt right again.

"You," my voice broke, muffled against him and the rain and the safety of his arms. "You mean everything to me too."