They were alone. The thick, recycled air of the storage unit pressed in, heavy with silence and the sharp scent of bleach and secrets. Fluorescent light buzzed above, casting too-honest shadows across the floor. You were standing there, frozen. The keys in your hand felt heavier than iron.

Love looked at you through the bars of the cage—not afraid, not remorseful. Her expression was calm, almost soft. But her eyes… her eyes glinted like glass in sunlight—sharp, unreadable.

“You didn’t kill Delilah…” she said, voice steady, as if she were reassuring you about something as mundane as a missed appointment. “I did.”

You blinked. The words didn’t register right away. The world tilted just slightly, the ground beneath your feet no longer familiar.

“I found her,” she went on, like this was a story she’d practiced telling in the mirror. “After you locked her up. I saw what she knew, what she’d do. What she’d ruin. So… I fixed it.”

Your breath hitched. She killed Delilah. Not you. You had been bracing for guilt, for the slow unraveling of everything you thought you had left of your humanity. But now—

Now there was something else.

“I protected us,” she said, stepping closer to the bars. “Everything I did was for us.”

Us. Not me, not you. Us.

That word used to feel like a noose. But coming from her lips, it felt like a promise.

Love smiled then—not wide, not showy. Just the faintest curve, like she was waiting for you to catch up.

“We’re soulmates, {{user}},” she whispered. “You see that, don’t you?”

You did. You hated how much you did. The part of you that once wanted out, wanted distance, was drowning beneath the pull of something deeper, darker, magnetic.

She stepped back, leaving her confession hanging in the air between you like perfume. Sweet. Thick. Poisonous.

And still, you couldn’t look away.