His Midnight Letters – Sophia Vale

“Or I won’t.” “Won’t what?” she whispered, her hands sliding up my chest, fingers trembling against my bare skin. “Won’t let you go,” I said, the truth cracking out of me like thunder. “Won’t be able to stop myself. Won’t survive losing you the way I lost her. I will possess you completely, and that possession will be your ruin.” Her breath hitched, her hands sliding up my chest, fingers trembling. “You won’t lose me,” she whispered. She didn’t know what she was promising.

She didn’t know that every vow spoken to me had consequences carved in bone. I grabbed her wrists—not harshly, but with a fear I couldn’t disguise— and held them against my chest, forcing her to feel my heartbeat, the erratic, brutal rhythm pounding beneath her palms. “You think I don’t want you?”

I breathed, my forehead dropping to hers, my voice shaking with restraint that bordered on agony. “Tesoro, I want you more than I have wanted anything in my life. I want to shatter this cold silence and take everything you are offering.” My voice dropped to a whisper meant only for her skin. “But wanting you is how men like me lose what they have left.

It’s how they die. And I cannot risk leaving you a ghost.” She leaned into me until her body was flush with mine, her pulse matching the violent tempo under my skin. “Then die wanting me,” she whispered. I froze. Her words. Her bravery. Her complete, devastating surrender to the risk. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. Could barely stay upright. My hand slid up her spine, slow, reverent, trembling.

I cupped the back of her head, pulling her mouth dangerously close to mine. Her lips hovered a breath away. The air was charged, thick with the scent of jasmine and the metallic promise of violence. I could feel the silk of her dress against my scarred torso, the heat of her core pressing against my hardening desire. And then I whispered the truth I had never spoken aloud, the final, terrifying confession of my self-made prison. “You are the only thing I want that terrifies me.” Her breath caught.

“And the only thing I will never survive losing, which is why I must never have you.” She lifted her chin, so our mouths brushed—ghost-soft, electric, sinful. “Then don’t lose me,” she whispered, her voice a plea and a command. “Just… let me in. Let me share the weight.”

The blood is still drying beneath my fingernails. It’s not mine, of course —it belongs to the nineteen-year-old kid who thought he could outrun a shotgun wound to the chest. He lost. I lost. The trauma ward at St. Jude’s is finally silent, the brutal rush of the late shift bled dry.

The chemical scent of hospital soap fights a losing battle against the metallic ghost of death clinging to my senses. I peel off my surgical mask, feeling the dry suction release from my skin. I am a machine fueled by adrenaline and a desperate, toxic form of control. My life is a sterile corridor: twelve-hour shifts, an empty apartment, and the perpetual, suffocating blanket of numbness I mistake for peace.

Grief isn’t a feeling I experience anymore; it’s a constant, heavy state of being. I save strangers because I couldn’t save him, a vicious irony that settles like a lead weight in my chest, crushing the breath with every beat. As I pull my long brown hair free from the tight, practical knot, I catch my reflection in the darkened glass of the nurse’s station.

Olive skin, hazel eyes shadowed by fatigue, lips set in a determined, gentle line. I look like a fighter, but I haven’t fought for my own life in eight months. I am a survivor clinging to the wreckage. “Rossi, going home?” Bianca, my pragmatic best friend, leans over the counter, the smell of her steaming Chinese food a jarring intrusion into my clinical headspace. “Yeah. See you tomorrow.” My voice is flat, practiced. “Don’t forget to eat something that isn’t hospital sludge,” Bianca warns, her eyes full of the concern I refuse to let close.

“And please, turn on the TV. You live in a vacuum. It’s going to suck you in, Emilia.” A vacuum. That’s exactly what I want. Because in the silence, there is no echo of Matteo’s voice, no sound of his final, desperate plea, and no reminder of the life that was violently stolen from us. My apartment, a brownstone shoebox, is a monument to that emptiness. There are no photographs, no sentimental clutter—just clean lines and polished wood that reflect nothing. I strip off my scrubs and toss them in the hamper.

Every movement is detached, mechanical. I fall into bed without changing the sheets, desperate for oblivion. Sleep arrives not as rest, but as a violation. The smell of gunpowder and rain is overwhelming. I am there again, crouching over him, my hands uselessly trying to contain the bloom of red on his shirt. The sound of shouting in guttural Italian is deafening. Matteo’s hand reaches for mine, his eyes wide and fixed, not on me, but on someone over my shoulder.

He is pale, dying, and his gaze holds a profound, searing disappointment that is meant for me.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 46e3503878c5946a
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,710,335 bytes (1.631 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 248
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 438.94 minutes
• Total Words: 87,789
• Total Characters: 498,417
• Average Words per Page: 353.99
• Average Characters per Page: 2009.75

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