Chapter 22: Collateral Damage
The words hung in the antiseptic air, heavy and raw. Because the machine is my responsibility. And I thought I’d broken it.
Matt stared at her. The defiance in his eyes, the defensive glitter, dissolved. It was like watching a wall crumble in slow motion. He looked away, his jaw working, his good hand gripping the sheet until his knuckles turned white. The monitor’s steady beep marked the passing seconds, a tiny, mechanical heartbeat in the silence.
Dasha stood rigid, horrified by her own admission. It was too much. It gave everything away. The carefully maintained distance between them was now just wreckage on a wet autobahn.
“Responsibility,” he repeated, the word flat. He gave a short, pained laugh that held no humor. “Right. Of course.” He shifted his gaze back to her, and the vulnerability she saw there was more frightening than any anger. “That’s the job, isn’t it? Keep the machine running. Wipe it down. Fix it when it dents itself.”
“Stop it,” she said, her voice low.
“Why? It’s the truth. You’re here because you’re competent. Because a broken asset is a problem to solve. I read your notes, Dasha. I know how you see me. A project. A series of logistical puzzles. ‘Arrange his life so he can function.’” He was quoting her, his tone brittle. “Well, mission accomplished. You arranged it so well I drove myself into a fucking barrier.”
The cruelty was back, but it was turned inward, a blunted weapon he was using on himself. It was worse.
Her composure, already in tatters, finally ripped clean through.
“You don’t get to do that,” she whispered, taking another step forward. The space between them was now just a few feet of scuffed linoleum. “You don’t get to play the victim after what you did.”
He flinched, as if struck.
“After what I did?” he echoed, his voice rising. “I read a private notebook. A stupid, idiotic violation. I admitted that. What did you do, Dasha? You took one look at a messy, human complication you couldn’t schedule and you vanished. You left a note. A fucking note. After everything. You just… deleted yourself.”
“Deleted myself?” The laugh that punched out of her was ugly and broken. “You think I just… logged out?”
She was shaking now. A fine, constant tremor she couldn’t stop. It started in her hands and climbed up her arms, rattling her ribs. The sterile room, the smell of bleach and plastic, it all compressed into a single, suffocating point.
“Then why are you shaking?” he asked, his voice quieter now, almost curious.
She looked down at her own hands as if they belonged to someone else. The truth was a live wire in her chest, sparking and dangerous. All of it—the Munich sublet, the lavender scent, the lonely silence—it had all been a dam holding back this specific flood. He had just torn it down.
“You’re literally with me one month ago,” she started, the words measured and terrifyingly quiet. Then the volume cracked. “And then you fucked me without the condom saying how irreplaceable I was!” Her voice slammed against the tiles, echoing. “And after that you didn’t notice me for two weeks. Two weeks where I was living thinking that I might be pregnant with your child!”
Matt went utterly still. The color drained from his face, leaving the bruise around his eye a livid, violent purple.
“And as soon as you knew that I wasn’t pregnant,” she screamed, the force of it bending her at the waist, “you basically were parading in front of me with another girl who I found together with you on your couch almost having sex!” Her throat was raw. “And you are accusing me that I left?! What was I supposed to do?!”
The silence after was absolute. The monitor beeped. A cart rattled far down the hall.
He was just staring, his mouth slightly open. The charming facade, the dry wit, the polished exterior—it was all gone. Stripped away. What was left was something hollowed out and shocked.
“You thought…” he began, his voice a scrap of sound. He stopped. Swallowed. “You never said.”
“Say what?” she hissed, straightening up, tears cutting hot paths down her cheeks. “‘Good morning, Matt, just scheduled your dry cleaning and by the way I’m late?’ Was I supposed to hand you a memo? You didn’t see me. I became part of the furniture. The efficient furniture you’d already fucked and forgotten about.”
“Dasha.” Her name was a plea.
“No.” She wiped her face roughly with the back of her hand. The anger was collapsing, leaving a vast, icy exhaustion. “The notebook was the last straw. Seeing that… girl was the proof. I was a problem you’d already solved. So I removed myself. Like any good assistant would. I solved your problem for you.”
She turned toward the door. Her legs felt like water.
“Don’t.” The sound was sharp. A command. Then, softer, shattered. “Please.”
She stopped, her back to him, her hand on the cold metal door handle. She could hear the rustle of sheets, a sharp intake of breath that was almost a sob.
“I didn’t know,” he said. The words were choked. “About the scare. I swear to god, I didn’t. I’m an idiot. A selfish, monumental idiot. Chloe… that was nothing. A performance. For you. To make you… I don’t even know what I was trying to make you do.”
“Feel?” Dasha suggested, still not turning around, her forehead against the cool door. “You wanted me to feel what you felt when you read the notebook. Small. Invisible. Interchangeable.”
A long pause.
“Yes,” he admitted, the confession bleak and total.
She closed her eyes. The fight was gone. There was only a deep, aching hollow. “Congratulations. It worked.”
She heard the soft, helpless sound he made then. It wasn’t a word. It was the sound of a man who had finally, truly, seen the wreckage he’d caused. Not the car. The other wreckage. The human one standing at his door.
“So what happens now?” he asked, his voice stripped bare.
Dasha finally turned. He looked ruined. More than the accident had made him.
“Now,” she said, her own voice empty and calm, “you heal. And I go back to Munich.” She gave the faintest, most broken shrug. “The machine is operational. The assistant is no longer required.”