4: I ALWAYS FELT GUILTY AROUND HIM

While the hour echoed all my confusion like a warm steam, my temples were burning in flames. I could feel my brain being pierced, an endless poison seeping in with every passing second. At that moment, I could barely move my arm with a thousand struggles, and I could only drag my feet by mere millimeters. While I sensed Asya's gaze from across the corridor like a shadow weighing on me, the broad-shouldered figure of Poyraz standing in the doorway drained the last of my hope. Just then, beneath the tree of my withering emotions, a dim, half-glowing light flickered.

I was always guilty in front of him, always the one who longed to throw herself into his arms.

As my hair blew away from my face, revealing my cheeks, I clutched the phone in my hands like a sponge—tight, unrelenting.

What was I supposed to do?

Was I to run to him as if nothing had happened?

What did my heart want? Though, honestly, I often didn't know what was good for me.

"Sinem," a voice rang out; there was a partial harshness in Poyraz's tone. "I'm going to see her," he said to Asya. My ears suddenly short-circuited—I couldn't hear anything anymore. All I noticed was movement at the threshold of the door. I saw Poyraz advancing toward me, stepping past Asya. With every step he took, I drifted further away from myself, grew more battered. He came close, knelt before me. I couldn't even turn my head, yet he leaned in. He was trying to see the helpless eyes buried within my face. "I'm here," he said, letting a faint trance settle on his words.

In a state of psychosis, my tongue became stiff. At that moment, maybe there was nothing in my mind worth saying.

Or maybe… I was choosing silence because whatever I said wouldn't matter anyway.

Asya leaned against the pillar of the wall, looking at me helplessly—as if her whole life had flipped upside down.

She was only allowing this conversation to happen so she wouldn't break me, just to let me hold on to life, if only for a moment. I knew she hated Poyraz—and she had every right to.

"Let's go," Poyraz said, trying to make his voice sound gentle. I didn't believe him. But I still wanted to go with him—to somewhere I probably didn't even know existed within myself.

I pulled my dull eyes away from Asya's distant gaze and looked coldly at Poyraz.

"Look, I don't know why you're being so sensitive, but… here I am. I don't know why you're this angry…" His voice faded toward the end.

By now, I had completely broken eye contact with Asya.

I pressed my fingernails into my palms.

"I don't know anything… You know me… You know my intentions. That day at the hotel, something important came up. That's why I left." The dark brown halos in his eyes fluttered, as if trying to catch me.

As I swam in the presence of him, I pressed my lips tightly together. The words spilled from them. My heart ached. "You always have something come up," I murmured. "There's always something with you, Poyraz, but for me, it's always you. You always play the victim. And I'm always the one who burns, quietly…" I muttered helplessly.

He shook his head from side to side, truly as if to reject it.

"No," he said, reaching for my hand in protest. "No, Sinem, no… I love you. Look, I have no other refuge in this world but you. You know that too…"

The urge to pull my hand away lasted only a fleeting moment.

Seconds later, my hands were trapped between his long, bony fingers. The coldness in my hand felt wrapped up, enclosed.

"The woman who texted your phone," I said absently. I still wondered. I locked my misty eyes onto his brown irises. "Who was she, then?"

I was still a pawn, kneeling before him.

If I could just free myself from his hold for a moment… I would've wanted to leave him.

But I couldn't. I only chose to listen to him in that moment.

"One of the commercial actresses," he said evasively. "She applied to the agency. I'm the director. Isn't it natural for me to go to a job interview with her?"

I searched for my voice, but I couldn't find it.

To him, everything was always natural anyway.

"It's not," I said, unable to stop myself. "Talk, then. Talk at the office. Why a restaurant, Poyraz? How easy it is for you to leave me night after night and end up with someone else, to sit with them without even taking a single call from me…" I was on the verge of sobbing. "Why are you like this? Why do you hurt me so much? Why do you act like I'm the one who ruined everything?"

He let out a muffled breath through his teeth.

"You're really overreacting now. Don't you trust me? It was just a business dinner. What's this, some jealous nonsense?"

I slowly shook my head and gave a bitter smile. My eyes had started to fill with tears. "Nonsense," I repeated. "Great. Nonsense." My bitter smile began to wither like a flower left without water. Even this pain I was drowning in was nothing more than nonsense to him. Now, even when he came—maybe to apologize—Poyraz still shattered my heart into pieces.

"Yes," he said without backing down.

"You can't even set aside your pride, your ego, not even for a second, can you?"

"All I wanted was to give us a better life. What's wrong with that? I mean, can love even survive without money?"

My gaze shifted across the room—to Asya's clenched fists.

"Didn't you say you'd never marry me?" I said, my anger rising. I stuttered out of shame. I was on the verge of losing my mind. My voice pierced through my embarrassment, growing louder with my rage. "Didn't you say you were done with me!"

"Calm down, Sinem!" he said, emphasizing each word. "Just calm down."

He realized within seconds that he wouldn't be able to calm me. He shifted the knee he had on the floor.

"I can't calm down! Do you have any idea how much my heart hurts? Do you know what kind of state you've left me in at this age? Do you know how much I break apart on the days you leave, and then defend yourself like nothing happened? Every time you deceive me…" My words reached their limit—my tears had already broken free.

"I didn't deceive you…" he said, pulling back for a moment. He didn't even let me finish my sentence.

"I didn't deceive you!" he shouted. "That never happened! You're imagining things!"

"Poyraz," I said, in pain, "Go! Don't write to me! Don't text! Don't call! Don't ask! Don't come! Just end it!"

The word end came out so faint…

As if it hadn't already been repeated a hundred times in front of Poyraz, stripped of all meaning.

Then, unexpectedly, he shook his head as if he couldn't bear it. "No," he whispered. A short silence fell between us. The weight of this love rested on both our backs. Everything teetered on the edge of ending, time itself almost froze. "We have a past…"

His words took far too long to form—for someone with such a blunt, thoughtless mind.

Asya's sharp breath reached all the way to my ears.

For a moment, I gathered my courage. "If what binds us isn't the now, the present moment—then what good is the past to us?" I asked, hoping he would understand me. As if… there was still a chance. That he might love me… But with an air of someone who only ever thought of himself, he said, "For you," and paused heavily. "For you… I did so much. How can you just ignore all of it?"

He didn't understand.

He was tearing down all my walls, one by one.

And me… Hadn't I done anything for him?

I fell silent. Words were not enough. They got stuck in my throat.

Even our eyes drifted downward, afraid to swim in each other's gaze.

"Go," I pleaded, as if begging.

But I didn't want him to go…

Yet he said, "Let's go," shattering me completely. It felt like he was inviting me to a kind of death.

Maybe… maybe with that one sentence, he had repaired all the pieces he'd smashed into dust.

And my hands had turned to ice. Where was he going to take me? What kind of place could I still go with him? After being broken a hundred times over, how would I survive one more fracture? But he didn't care about any of that. He touched my arm. At his touch, I closed my eyes. I was about to follow a man who couldn't even offer me a single apology. If he had just looked at me once—just once—I would have leaned against his chest without even taking a breath. I would've held him.

"Go," I mumbled again, like someone in a fever dream. "Go. Don't hurt us any more than you already have."

But instead, he took my arm and pulled me up.

I had surrendered to him.

My body was betraying me.

Poyraz could always convince me to jump off every cliff.

That day, I betrayed myself once again—and it wouldn't be the last time.

At that moment, I looked at the pillar. Asya was staring from there with a deep frown, and then suddenly she stepped forward in anger. "Let go of her," she said, wagging her finger. "I'll kill you! I swear I'll kill you! Enough already! Haven't you ruined her life enough?" She didn't even leave a breath between her words. I saw the sweat glistening on her forehead from rage. She reached out to me protectively.

And right then, Poyraz's hand tightened even more around my wrist.

I saw the expression that appeared on Asya's face in that moment: it was helplessness. It was the feeling of not being able to save your closest friend from her executioner.

Without caring about anything, Poyraz said, "Move," to Asya.

Asya looked at his tightening fingers around my wrist, and at my face, which showed no resistance.

Yet she still noticed my tears. "Get the hell out of our house!" she shouted, unable to control herself.

I was completely in shock.

I couldn't move a muscle—my feet felt like the legs of a broken table, ready to collapse.

"Stop hurting this girl!" Asya said, pointing her fingertip at him. "If you have even this much of a heart—" She showed just the smallest space between her fingers. I couldn't even express how sorry I was for putting her through this. "Just this much," she repeated, as if giving up. "…Just this much conscience."

Asya's words pierced my ears like bullets.

Poyraz shifted his blank gaze down to my wrist. None of what was said mattered to him in the slightest. Because the Poyraz I knew—he was never guilty. To him, the fault was always somewhere else. With a muffled, commanding voice, he spoke:

"Let's go."