"Alice--" Ryder tried to say--maybe placate the rising horror within me, which must've been visible on my face and the way I'd just frozen in the middle of the kitchen.

But I didn't let him. Because I needed to know with dying certainty if what I'd just heard was true. Was it?

"What..." I spoke, stumbled on what I needed to ask and what I wanted to hear. I looked away from Ryder's eyes to Rafael, only to be pulled back to him. "What do you mean? What's going on?"

What haven't you told me? I wanted to ask--scream. This is what he'd been hiding from me, wasn't it?

All I got was seconds of silence that felt unbearable.

"Querida." It was a stark contrast--the pained way he spoke to me--so detached from the ragged frustration that he'd aimed at Rafael just seconds ago.

He hadn't expected me to be here. He hadn't thought I'd be listening.

I took a step back before I could even stop myself--try to tell myself to think rationally. But I couldn't. All I wanted to do--wished to do--was run. Get away from this. I hadn't known. I couldn't stay and let this nightmare come true.

Ryder noticed it though. He noticed the moment I started pulling away--detaching myself from it all. I wanted him to tell me, explain this to me, but at the same time I didn't want to hear him say it. I didn't want him to explain this to me. All I wanted was for him to tell me he'd stay.

"Alice. Nothing's going on." He could see me spiraling. Why was he lying to me?

"Jesus." I heard Rafael exhaling sharply before he suddenly--too angrily--barged out of the kitchen and away from us. Leaving the both of us alone.

"You're leaving," I spoke, but my voice was only a horrified whisper. I couldn't even make myself say it louder.

How much worse would it get before it stops entirely?

Ryder moved closer to me and I could see the wary look in his eyes--knowing that he was breaking me but doing nothing to stop it. This time thankfully my legs didn't betray me. I stayed put. I felt...lost.

"Alice." He shook his head at me. "Hey, hey, look at me." I couldn't look into the blue of his eyes anymore--ones that were my home--ones that made me feel safe--and watch him leave me.

An agreement with his father, the words replayed on a loop in my head. Sickening. Nauseous. He'd done it to save me?

How much worse would it be this time? His father would hurt him just like Santiago had said. All because of me.

"Querida--"

"You can't. You can't go back to him." I was shaking my head, felt feverish with the need to touch him--stop him. I couldn't get Santiago's words and his voice out of my head. I couldn't stop the cruel pictures he'd painted in my head--of the memories Ryder carried as his own scars.

I couldn't--he didn't even know that I knew. That I knew some of what his father had done. That I couldn't fucking breathe with the thought of him getting hurt.

He raked a hand through his hair--agitated. But he didn't reach out towards me. I could see him holding back.

"Ryder." My voice broke. "Why?"

"Why do you ask me that, querida?" He asked--all that devastation reigned in. How could I have thought everything would be fine? "I don't fucking care what my father asks me to do, what he wants from me. I needed to know where you were. I needed to get you out of that place before it was too late."

I stared at him and watched as all the happiness around us--the pieces that had been slowly coming back to life--seemed to crack and crumble. Tremble. Die.

"You can't go back to him."

He didn't say anything in response to that. I won't, he didn't say. Because he wouldn't lie.

"He's going to hurt you." My voice didn't sound like my own.

"Alice--"

"No." I was shaking my head, stepping near him, because him not closing the distance between us, as if he was already separating himself from me, was making me tremble with dread. "No. Please."

He reached out--reached towards me and touched me, pulled me closer and held my face in his hands. "I'll come back, querida."

"N-No." My vision blurred with useless tears. "You won't. You can't." You won't be able to. I know he'll hurt you. Please don't go.

He sighed--a soft, heartbreaking sound that seemed to kill something inside of me. I felt him caress the side of my face--a soft press onto the underside of my jaw until I clung onto him. "I'll come back."

But he didn't sound so sure. I could see the teetering certainty in the air around us. He didn't know for sure.

"What if he hurts you?" Even asking it made my ribs ache. I couldn't--didn't want to imagine it--the scars on his back, the wounds that weren't etched into his skin, the pain he'd never told me about.

His jaw ticked. "I can take it."

I tried to stifle it but a heart wrenching sob left me. "How can you say that to me?"

He pressed his forehead against mine, fingers digging into my scalp, behind my ears. "Querida." He whispered--pleaded. "I had to save you. Please understand."

The few silent seconds seemed to only increase the agony over my splintering heart.

"When..." My voice broke. It was a horrible sound, like a crack of glass. "When will you be back?" Please don't lie, I pleaded with my very soul.

And he didn't lie. Because he'd never lied to me before, and he wouldn't now either. I wished then, at that moment, that he did--that he lied to me in this very moment. A lie would've been better than the evident response he didn't give me.

"Stay here?" He asked me--a soft, uncertain request. I could've felt the distance between us stretching into unbearable miles. He was here, right here, but I knew he wouldn't be anymore.

Don't leave me. I squeezed my eyes closed.

"Alice."

"I c-can't."

He tensed against me. His touch purely borne out of sudden stillness now.

"You won't come back to me." I whispered--told him my greatest fear that I hadn't wanted to voice out--that felt like it was ripped out of me without my choice.

I will, I begged him to say. But all he gave me was silence.

Maybe he won't.

I braced myself to pull away from him. He didn't let me. He pulled me close--impossibly closer--and kissed me--his lips finding my own, fingers digging into my hair and the taste of him all that I could breathe right then. All that I could feel--the pain, the terror, the love I so desperately carried for him. The love that had made him give up his own freedom.

When he pulled away from me, something that felt an awful lot like finalty shuttered over his eyes.

I watched him pulling away from me and I stayed right there--bereft and still and reeling.

"I have to go, querida," he told me.

There was nothing left in me that could've made him stay.