Chapter 187: Why Are You Acting Like This?

The apartment is silent, wrapped in a peaceful stillness that should feel like coming home but instead settles against my skin like something waiting. The light is dim and warm, the familiar shadows of his living room stretching across the floor, touching the edges of the couch where I sit, watching him.

Deniz has been strange since we left the hospital.

In the car, he was distant. His questions came clipped, his answers shorter than they should have been. He held my hand, but his grip was loose, his thumb resting still against my skin instead of tracing its usual circles.

Over dinner, he talked only about my health, my medicine, the doctor’s instructions. Never about us. Never about anything else. And every time I tried to catch his eyes, they slipped away—finding somewhere else to land: the window, the table, the space just over my shoulder.

He stands in front of me now, reading the medicine instructions on the small folded paper from the pharmacy. His brow is furrowed, his lips moving silently as he works through the schedule.

Morning. Afternoon. Evening.

His face is serious, focused—like he’s deciphering something far more complicated than a list of pills. Like if he gets this wrong, something terrible will happen.

He walks to the kitchen, and my eyes follow him. He fills a glass with water, sets it down, then picks it up again before walking back.

He moves like someone trying to fill the silence with motion—like he’s outrunning a question he doesn’t want to ask, a truth he already knows.

He looks like a worried mother, desperate to make her child well as quickly as possible—as if health could be forced into being through sheer will, as if love alone could fix what’s breaking inside me.

He offers me the glass. I take it. His gaze stays on the paper.

“So this one is for the morning,” he murmurs, more to himself than to me. He picks up a small bottle filled with blue pills, turning it over in his hands.

“And this is for the evening.”

He opens the lid, shakes out two pills, and holds them out to me. His hand is steady, but I catch the tremor at his wrist—the fine vibration of someone holding themselves together by the thinnest thread.

“Here. Take these.”

I look at his hand. The pills rest in the center of his palm, small, blue, ordinary. Then I look at his face. He’s still not meeting my eyes.

I take the pills. I take the glass. I swallow. I drink.

He takes the glass from my hand and sets it down on the table. His fingers brush mine as he pulls away, and for a moment, I think he might stay there, close enough for me to feel his warmth.

But he steps back, turning toward the kitchen, searching for something else to do—anything that will keep him from having to sit still and be with me.

“Do you want more soup?” he asks. “Or maybe some tea? The doctor said warm liquids would help with—”

“Deniz.”

He stops. His hands hover at his sides, uncertain. His eyes finally meet mine.

“What is it?”

I don’t answer. I just look at him.

He leans forward, his fingers pressing against my temple, checking for fever. The touch is gentle, familiar—the same gesture he’s used a hundred times before.

But tonight it feels different. Desperate, maybe. Like he’s searching for proof that I’m still here, still whole.

“Are you okay?” His voice is soft, worried—like he’s afraid of the answer.

“No.”

His hands are on my face in an instant, palms cool against my cheeks. His eyes scan my face, searching for something he can fix—some wound to bandage, some pain to soothe.

“What happened?” His voice rises, fraying at the edges.

“Do you feel pain? Where—”

He grabs my wrist, tugging gently, already pulling me toward the door. “We’re going back to the hospital. I’ll call the driver. We can be there in twenty minutes. I’ll—”

I don’t move.

I push him instead, my hands flat against his chest. His eyes widen in surprise. I grab his collar and shove him back onto the couch. He falls with a soft thud, his breath catching, his hands coming up to steady us both.

“Zyren—”

I swing my leg over and settle onto his lap, straddling his thighs, my weight pressing him into the cushions. His hands hover at my hips, trembling—uncertain, afraid to hold on, afraid to let go.

“What are you—”

I press my fingers to his lips. “Shh.”

He goes still beneath me. His chest rises and falls against mine, quick and shallow, his heart racing under my palm.

I lean closer, our faces inches apart, close enough to see the flicker of something in his dark eyes—fear, maybe, or love tangled so tightly with it that I can’t tell them apart. His breath is warm against my skin, uneven.

“What happened?”

My voice is quiet, steady— the voice I use when I need him to hear me. My fists clench in the fabric of his shirt, twisting the soft cotton.

“Why are you acting like this?”

His cheeks flush, color rising from his neck to his ears. He looks away—toward the window, the dark city beyond the glass, anywhere but me.

“Nothing.”

“Deniz.” My fingers find his chin, turning his face back to mine.

“Look at me.”

He meets my gaze reluctantly, and in the dim light of his apartment, I see it—everything he’s been trying to hide.

“Tell me what happened.”

The silence stretches between us, thin and fragile. I watch his throat move as he swallows, his hands curling into fists at his sides, gripping the edge of the couch cushion.

“Zyren.” His voice cracks. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I blink, my face going still.

His eyes are bright now, wet with tears he’s fighting to hold back.

“Why didn’t you tell me about your rut?” His voice breaks on the word.

“Why did you hide it from me?”

My fists loosen on his shirt. The tension drains from my shoulders, leaving something heavier in its place—something that settles deep in my chest.

So this is it. This is why he’s been distant. Why he’s been avoiding my eyes. Why he’s been treating me like something that might break if he holds too tightly.

I let out a slow breath.

“Deniz…”

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