Chapter 15: You Were Mine Before You Knew
Chapter 15: You Were Mine Before You Knew
Luca's POV
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He left me a note.
Just a single slip of paper on the pillow, the corners weighed down with my discarded ring.
"I need to breathe. Don't follow me."
As if I would ever obey that.
Elio.
Elio who belonged to me before he ever spoke my name.
Elio who slept with my collar and cried with my hands tied in his hair.
He thought he could run?
No.
He didn't understand.
I hadn't fallen in love with him the night he came to my club.
I hadn't even fallen in love the night I first fucked him, rough and raw, against my office desk with a gun in my hand.
No.
I fell the first time I saw him in that orphanage.
Tiny.
Barefoot.
With a bruise on his chin and a spark in his eye that made the whole world look like an insult compared to him.
And when I left him behind — when I thought keeping my darkness away would save him — I watched him from a distance. For years.
His college scholarship?
Me.
The rent payments that never bounced?
Also me.
The bartender that got fired after texting him too often?
You guessed it.
Elio wasn't just mine now.
He was always mine.
And now, he thought freedom was an option?
I made the call.
"Find him."
---
They brought him back three hours later.
He hadn't gone far — just to an old church by the sea.
A place we used to run to when we were both nobodies.
They carried him in gently.
He didn't fight.
His face was streaked with salt. Maybe from the ocean air.
Maybe from tears.
I told the men to leave.
And I stood in front of him, watching him kneel.
Not because I asked.
Because he wanted to.
"Elio," I said.
He looked up.
"You left."
"I needed to know if I was still myself."
"And?"
"I'm not."
I stepped forward.
"You belong to me."
"I know."
I knelt, too.
In front of him.
Elio stared at me like he couldn't believe what I was doing.
"You were mine before you knew," I whispered. "I made a world that would keep you alive just long enough to come back to me."
His breath hitched. "You were always watching?"
"Yes."
"I didn't even know you still existed."
"I never stopped existing for you."
His hands reached for my face.
I let them.
"You terrify me," he whispered.
"Because I'll never let you go?"
"No," he said. "Because I think I don't want you to."
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Later that night, I drew a bath.
Not for me.
For him.
He stepped into it without question.
Naked.
Soft.
Beautiful even when exhausted.
I took my time — washing him like something holy. My hands reverent. My heart in my throat.
"I would've come back," he whispered. "I just… I needed to feel who I was without you for a minute."
"And?"
He turned in the water, looked up at me with wet lashes.
"I'm only real with you."
I leaned down.
And kissed him.
Slow.
Without force.
Without chains.
Just us.
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