[BL] Bound to My Enemy: The Billionaire Who Took My Girl Chapter 280: Drowning

CYAN

It was not a dream. It was sothing less ford than a dream. It was just a sensation of warmth turning into cold.

I felt sothing slipping through my hands like sand. There was the sll of salt water and the sharp tang of iron.

I felt the weight of soone leaning against . Then that weight beca an absence before I could even fully register that it was there.

My thoughts were not complete yet. They were not coherent. They were just a direction, like a compass needle pointing toward sothing that was no longer there.

Then I reached the surface. I did not break through it with a splash. I was just present all of a sudden.

I felt the texture of the fabric against my cheek. It was not my fabric. I felt the specific weight of a heavy blanket. It was not my blanket.

I heard the sound of a television playing at a low volu. Sothing was on the screen, but I was not watching it.

The light in the room was coming from the wrong angle. It had the wrong quality. This was not my window.

These things registered in my mind, but they did not land. There is a difference between those two things.

Registration is passive. Landing requires sothing that I did not currently have access to.

I sat up slowly. I did not move slowly because I was in pain. I moved slowly because speed requires intention.

Intention requires more energy than was currently available to . I looked at the room through a narrow lens.

The circle of the image was present, but it was surrounded by the soft dark of peripheral nothingness.

The image itself was slightly blurred at the edges. It looked like soone had adjusted the focus partway and then simply walked away.

I did not feel panic. I did not feel relief or confusion. I just had the awareness that sothing was around and that I was inside of it.

My mory did not arrive in a continuous stream. It was not like a film playing in a theater. It ca in separate fras without any connective tissue between them.

In the first fra, I saw my own hands. They were dark. There was sothing on them that did not belong to .

In the second fra, there was a sound. It was not quite a voice and not quite a scream. It was muffled, like the way sound travels through deep water.

The third fra was a sensation of sothing warm becoming cold. It was the specific temperature shift of life leaving sothing that was only warm because of .

In the fourth fra, I was running. I saw the dock and the dark water.

In the fifth fra, there was nothing. It was the nothing that cos after the body decides it has taken enough for one day.

The gaps between these fras were not frightening to . They were just gaps. My brain was selecting what to show and what to hold back.

It was like a parent deciding what a child is ready to see. When I tried to reach toward those fras, they receded.

My brain stepped in front of them and told not yet. I accepted this.

My brain has been doing this my whole life. I have learned that pushing against it costs more than waiting for it to open up.

Soone was there with . I rembered this much. I could not see the face clearly, but I rembered the shape of a person.

I rembered the temperature of a presence. It was familiar in a sensory way rather than a logical one.

It was not the recognition of a na or a face that made it familiar. It was sothing more primitive than that.

It was a similarity to sothing I already knew. My body categorized it as being adjacent to what is safe and adjacent to what is known.

I rembered a voice making sothing like a bet. It ntioned a number. Two days.

The voice was cold and precise. It was nothing like warmth, but it was close to the shape of sothing I recognized.

The image in my mind cleared slightly at the edges.

The face was familiar in a specific way. It had the sa architecture as soone else’s face, but it was much colder.

It had the temperature of soone who built walls earlier than most people do and built them much better.

The na arrived. Nick. He was Noah’s brother. He was the man with the jaw that I had hit on a pavent in what felt like a different life.

He told to follow.

So I followed.

I did not decide to do it.

My body moved toward the warmth in a cold room without being asked.

I looked around the room properly now. I saw the couch and the blanket. I saw the coffee table and the television.

Everything was clean and ordered. It was the specific order of soone who controls their environnt because that is the only version of control they can have.

I moved through the space slowly. I saw the kitchen and the bathroom. I saw the details of a space that belonged to a person who bought the sa brand of everything. To this person, variables were just inefficiencies.

The last two days arrived in my mind as awareness rather than mory. I was aware of moving when I was directed to move. I was aware of eating when food appeared in front of . I responded when I was spoken to.

All of it happened from the outside of myself. I was watching myself do these things through soone else’s eyes that happened to be my own.

I recognized this feeling. It was not new. I had been here before. It was not this apartnt, but it was this state of being. I was looking from behind glass at my own life operating without .

"This feeling again," I said aloud. I said it to no one, or I said it to myself. It was the sa thing.

I sat back down on the couch. There was a quiet in my head, but it was not a peaceful quiet. It was the wrong kind of quiet. It was the silence of a room after sothing loud has stopped.

I took an inventory of my mind. The constant low-level noise that my brain always makes should have been there.

My thoughts should have been running and making observations. My pattern recognition and analysis should have been running on everything all the ti.

Instead, there was almost nothing. There was just a hollow space. Underneath that hollow, there was a specific wrongness. I knew the space shouldn’t be empty because sothing was filling it before.

The na arrived quietly and without any drama.

Cassian.

That is what was there.

That is what filled the space. Now the absence of him was louder than the na itself.

A thought about my dication surfaced. It was muscle mory. My brain had learned early on that it needs managent when certain states arrive.

I had not brought it with . I had been here for two days without it.

A quiet urge appeared at the edge of my mind.

It was an old friend that was not really a friend. There you are, I thought. I was wondering when you would show up.

I did not follow the urge today. I noted it and set it aside. I have had years of practice, so I knew it could be set aside even when it felt like the only thing that would help.

Another presence flickered at the edge of the emptiness. It was a face, but it was not Cassian’s face. The word arrived before I could even decide to think it. Noah.

The resistance in my mind was imdiate. I shut the thought down fast. It was faster than the last ti I shut it down, which had been faster than the ti before that.

But the restraint only made the feeling stronger. That is the thing about suppression.

I have known this academically for years, and I lived it anyway. Knowing sothing and being able to stop it are two entirely different skills.

Underneath it all, there was a quiet truth. It was not dramatic. Cassian chose soone. He is choosing soone.

And it is not . I know this. It shouldn’t matter, and yet it does.

A thought arrived again about the person who owned this apartnt. I noticed that

Nick watches too closely for soone who performs the act of not watching.

He had brought a stranger ho, which contradicted everything his apartnt said about him.

It contradicted the order and the control and the single-brand lifestyle.

The contradiction was interesting to , even in this state. My brain still noticed those things.

The curiosity was small, but it was present. It was the first thing that had felt like the real Cyan since I was on that dock.

Why did he let stay? I wondered. He didn’t have to. He wanted to leave. He left anyway and then he ca back.

I did not have the answer. I noted the curiosity and set it beside the other things for later.

The turning point was small and not dramatic at all. A thought crossed my mind fully.

Two days. That is what he said. Cassian will wake up.

Everything about it was utterly impossible but I still wanted to believe.

Then the next thought ca. Cassian was shot.

It was not fragnted anymore. It was not a fra without connective tissue. It was complete and clear and present.

Everything followed in a sequence. I rembered the dock and the blood. I rembered Cassian’s weight and the car. I rembered the hospital and the floor. It was all playing like a film now.

The buffering In my brain ended. The quiet beca sothing else entirely. I sat very still for a mont while the information arrived in full.

"I need to go," I said aloud to the empty apartnt.

The device was sitting on the cushion beside . It was not my phone. It was Nick’s spare. He had left it with a passcode that he had said aloud as if it was nothing. But it was not nothing.

I picked it up and entered the passcode. I dialed his number... Sothing I’ve morized my whole life.

The phone rang once.

"Master Cyan," a voice said. It was Reginald. He answered on the first ring because he always answers on the first ring for .

I exhaled. It was the specific exhale of soone who had been sowhere else for two days. I had just heard the first voice that sounded like ho.