Ruin in Our Rearview
“Toujours en avant, mon amour.”
—Rhys
The road pulled away beneath us like ribbon unravelling from a wound. Fast. Endless. Blurred in that dreamlike way things do when you’re running from something and trying to convince yourself it’s toward something else. The tyres hummed against the asphalt, steady and low, and the salty breath of the sea drifted in through the cracked windows, curling around the leather seats and the sweat-damp curve of my neck like a memory I hadn’t earned yet.
Rumour lay against my thigh like she was carved from stone. Two-and-a-half kilograms of Pomeranian fury and loyalty, radiating heat and disapproval in equal measure. She hadn’t blinked since we left the villa. Not once. Just glued herself to me like the world outside the car couldn’t touch us if her tiny body was in the way.
Beside me, he hadn’t let go of my hand once. Not when the white bones of the villa disappeared behind us, swallowed up by the trees and the past and the silence we’d left burning on its floors. Not when the coastline surged into view, glittering like broken glass and cruel hope all at once. He just held me. His hand wrapped around mine, broad and steady, scarred from too many things that never made the papers. Like he wasn’t holding my fingers. Like he was holding a promise. Like he was one.
Rhys Llewellyn, master of empires and engineered catastrophes, didn’t say a word.
Not that I expected him to. His silences were never empty. They were weapons. Sharpened over years of playing diplomat and devil. You don’t become the most feared name in syndicate circles by shouting your intentions into the wind. You do it by watching. Calculating. Stripping the board clean and setting it back on fire just to see who still plays. That’s what people saw when they looked at him.
Me? I saw the man who still smelled like salt and sex and survival, shirt rumpled from where I’d pulled it half off and never let him fix it. His profile cut sharp against the morning light, jaw clenched, eyes forward, like if he turned to look at me he might fall apart again and we couldn’t afford to do that twice in one day.
But his thumb brushed over mine every few minutes. Absent. Thoughtless. Constant.
I didn’t think I’d survive him. Not when I first met him. Not when he walked back into my life like a hurricane in a tailored suit and said remember me? without ever saying a word. But somehow, here we were. Me, the girl who once swore she’d never belong to anyone again. Him, the man who set fire to entire bloodlines just to keep me breathing. And neither of us had looked away since.
The coastline flickered past the window like something too pretty to trust. The kind of beauty that leaves you bleeding if you touch it wrong. And beneath my ribs, something strange twisted low in my stomach. Not quite pain. Not quite pressure. Just a throb. Deep. Insistent. Quiet. Like a bell tolling under water.
I shifted slightly, brushing a hand across my abdomen as I smoothed out a wrinkle in my shirt. Muscle memory. Not meaning anything. Not yet. Just a gesture. A pause.
The car rolled to a stop.
The airfield was quiet. The kind of quiet that costs money. The kind Rhys had in spades. The private jet shimmered under the morning sun—black and sleek and waiting, like even the sky knew not to ask questions.
Jude was already stepping out first, sweeping the lot with that stare he wore like a second skin. Calculated. Cold. Like he expected a sniper to materialise from the clouds or a car bomb to start singing under the tarmac. Man didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe wrong. Just moved like a chess piece that knew it was the game.
Elara followed—sleek, silent, spine wired tight as a bowstring. Her gun wasn’t drawn, but her eyes were. Every movement, every parked vehicle, every goddamn seagull on the roof got the same treatment. She didn’t relax. Not for Rhys. Not for Jude. But when she glanced over at me—It happened again. That crack. That softening. Like something behind her ribs dropped its blade for half a second and decided fine, you’re not going to die today. Her mouth didn’t move. Her eyes barely did. But I felt it. Not pity. Not concern. Not some overwrought little how are you feeling, sweetie? head tilt. Just raw, bone-deep approval.
Because I hadn’t shattered. Because I wasn’t tucked behind Rhys like a porcelain wife from a political drama. Because I’d peeled myself off the floor and walked out of that villa whole and still choosing to stay in the fight.
She didn’t say it. She didn’t need to. That nod—that half-breath of a pause when our eyes met—was the speech. The medal. The fuck-you-I-see-you. Between women who’d bled too much to romanticise survival.
I dipped my chin in return. Barely. Just enough. And then I stepped out.
The heat hit first—thick, immediate, the kind that wrapped around your legs and climbed straight to your scalp. The tarmac shimmered like it was hiding secrets beneath the surface, and the air smelt like jet fuel, salt, and something scorched that might’ve been my own adrenaline burning off.
Rumour leapt down from the seat behind me and strutted to my side like finally, my stage. She trotted toward the stairs with her tail flagging high, completely ignoring the very expensive jet like it was a second-rate Uber she had already reviewed poorly.
I didn’t smile. Not exactly. But something in me cracked open a little. Let in the light.
Rhys rounded the car slowly. No rush. No swagger. Just that same quiet intensity that made people cross streets and entire governments blink first. His eyes never left mine. He didn’t touch me—didn’t need to. The distance between us already hummed with heat. He reached for our bags like it was instinct. Like carrying the weight of us—past, present, whatever bloody storm we were walking into next—wasn’t just a task, but his purpose. No hesitation. No fanfare. Just quiet, brutal devotion wrapped in the shape of a man who once tore apart half the world and still offered me the gentlest goddamn touch I’d ever known.
I didn’t stop him. Didn’t argue. Didn’t shoulder the weight like I used to out of principle and pride and some old wound that always whispered don’t be a burden. No, I just leaned into him slightly—barely a brush of shoulders. Just enough to feel the heat of him, the steadiness. Just enough to remind us both that we weren’t doing this alone.
We walked in silence, the kind that spoke in heartbeats, across the tarmac. The jet waited, sleek and glinting, its metal skin winking under the heavy morning sun like it knew something we didn’t.
By the time we reached the base of the stairs, something turned over low in my stomach. A strange heat. Sharp. Fast. Gone before I could name it. I blinked. Hard. The air smelled wrong—too thick, too chemical, the sting of jet fuel punching harder than usual, making my head swim just slightly to the left of fine.
He noticed. Of course he did. His pace slowed immediately, and his hand brushed the small of my back—light, grounding.
“You alright, mon amour?” he murmured, voice pitched low, careful.
God, that voice.
I forced a smile. One of those tight, bright specials. The kind you could hang Christmas lights off of and still not see the cracks. Believable—if you didn’t know me like he did. If you hadn’t already mapped the fault lines.
“Just tired,” I lied gently, reaching for the rail. “Let’s go.”
He watched me for a beat longer than was comfortable—calculating, measuring, that blade-sharp brain of his trying to dissect my pulse from thirty centimetres away—but he didn’t push. Just nodded once, hoisted the bag higher on his shoulder, and followed me up. Step by step. Upward. Forward. Into the future we were no longer running from but toward—wide-eyed, battle-scarred, and still fucking daring.
The cabin welcomed us with a blessed wash of cool air and the low, steady hum of engines—soothing in a way nothing had been for days. Maybe weeks. I dropped into one of the wide leather seats near the front and let my spine melt into it like the bones holding me up had finally gotten permission to breathe.
Rumour wasted no time. She hopped down like royalty disembarking from a battlefield and flopped dramatically beneath my feet with a sigh so theatrical I was half tempted to give her a round of applause.
Rhys moved efficiently, stowing the bags like he was still in survival mode. Sharp. Controlled. Every gesture carrying the weight of someone who’d unpacked too many coffins in his lifetime to take luggage lightly.
I let my head fall back against the seat, eyes closing for a moment as the adrenaline bled out of me in slow, reluctant drips. That nausea nipped at the edges again—just a whisper this time, a flicker of unease beneath all the other noise—but I shoved it down. Tucked it away with the things I wasn’t ready to name. Not now. Not when we were in the air between everything we’d survived and everything we were about to fight for.
Later, I told it. Later, you can ruin me. Right now, I’m too fucking busy choosing to live.
A breath. Another. I cracked one eye open just in time to see him sink into the seat across from me—exhausted, wrecked, still a little wild-eyed like he wasn’t sure we were real yet. Like maybe we’d vanish if he blinked too long.
I didn’t wait. I just reached. My hand slid across the narrow aisle, palm open.
And his fingers met mine like a lifeline. Like a promise sealed not in gold, but in blood and ruin and something sacred we still didn’t know how to name. He squeezed once. Hard. Final.
And then the jet engines roared beneath us, powerful and certain, and the ground began to fall away like a memory we’d finally outlived. The sky split open above us—bright, endless, waiting.
I didn’t look down. Didn’t look back. I looked at him. And with the blue swallowing us whole, I whispered, just loud enough for the sky to hear:
“Only forward now.”
The hum shifted. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just that subtle change in pitch that told me we’d left the ground behind—that gravity had let go, and so had everything else. Wreckage. Ghosts. Blood. All of it. Still there. Still mine. But no longer pressing its weight into my chest like it owned the rhythm of my heart.
We were airborne. And that ache? That brutal, honey-thick ache that made me feel like something inside me might start beating again? It didn’t scream. It didn’t rejoice. It just… whispered. Quiet and insistent, curling low in my ribs like a hope I hadn’t given permission to crawl back in.
Rhys’s voice broke the silence first.
“Toujours en avant, mon amour.”
Always forward, my love.
God, it landed like a match dropped into soaked cotton—slow to ignite, but once it caught? There was no putting it out.
I didn’t cry. Not really. But my body betrayed me anyway—one full-body shiver, deep and slow, the kind that only happens after. After the crash. After the silence. After surviving something that should’ve ended you. I turned toward him—didn’t hesitate, didn’t analyse, didn’t try to be anything but alive—and brushed my mouth against his. Not a kiss. Not a claim. Just breath shared in that tiny space between heartbreak and healing. Skin to skin. Quiet. Honest. A communion, not a conquest.
The plane banked west. Smooth. Certain. Like it knew where it was going even if I didn’t. Toward Amalfi. Toward cliffs older than everything I’d ever believed in. And for the first time in a long, long time… I didn’t want to jump.
“How far away is it, mon amour?” I asked, voice soft, threadbare. Like it had been dragged through too many nights and didn’t trust itself not to splinter.
“Just under twenty hours, kitten,” he said, low and steady. “One stop in Dubai. Then straight through to Naples.”
Twenty hours. I could survive anything for twenty hours.
“I’ve already booked a car to meet us. And the villa is ready. Remote. Secure. No neighbours. Just cliffs. Just sea. You’ll sleep there, mon amour. You’ll heal.”
Sleep. God, I’d forgotten what that was. Real sleep. Not the kind with one eye open, one hand on a blade, one breath away from splintering again. I let the air go—long and slow. Like it was the first one I’d taken that wasn’t laced with fear. My head tipped, almost involuntarily, resting against his shoulder. And for once? I didn’t brace. Didn’t tense. Didn’t flinch like touch was a mistake I couldn’t afford. I just leaned in.
He didn’t speak again. Didn’t need to. His hand stayed wrapped around mine, warm and certain.
And for the first time in what felt like weeks, maybe months—I wasn’t fighting just to exist in my own skin.
