[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-bl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my":3,"chapter-bl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my-bl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my-chapter-268":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"english","[BL] Bound to My Enemy: The Billionaire Who Took My Girl",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},1735702,2219,"Chapter 268: I Picked Up A Stray Exotic Bird","bl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my-chapter-268",268,"\u003Cp>NICK\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The shower was a necessity, not for the hygiene, though that was paramount, but for the diagnostic review.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I stood under the spray, the heat bordering on scalding, and performed a post-operative analysis of my own sanity.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I reviewed the evening the way I review complex trauma cases: looking for the precise moment the logic failed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The operating room had been logical. Saving Cassian Wolfe was a professional mandate.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The waiting room had been arguably logical; one cannot simply leave the family of a VIP injured on the linoleum.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The bathroom and the stitches were pushing the boundaries of my job description, but they remained within the realm of medical intervention.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>My apartment, however, was completely indefensible.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Every person I have ever brought home had a reason for being there. There was a transaction involved, a mutual understanding of what the morning would look like.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Cyan would make no sense in the morning. He made no sense right now, at whatever ungodly hour this was.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I tried to find a justification, professional obligation, liability concern, efficiency, but the math refused to balance.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The conclusion I kept reaching was a simple, terrifying sentence: I have no idea what I’m doing. I rejected the thought. It returned. I rejected it again. Eventually, the water ran cold, and I was forced to step out and face the stranger in my living room.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was 2:00 a.m. The living room light was still on, casting a harsh, artificial glow over the space. Cyan was a slumped shape on the couch, too still for someone who was merely resting.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I performed a quick mental triage. He hadn’t eaten. Medically speaking, a body in shock requires glucose.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This was a clinical assessment. It was a perfectly reasonable, professional justification for what I was about to do.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I clung to that logic as I entered my kitchen, a room I almost never occupy at this hour, not for Lila, not for anyone.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I stood in the doorway and called out, \"What do you want to eat?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Nothing. Not even a shift in his breathing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I stared at the back of the couch for a moment before turning back to the fridge.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I ran the numbers: trauma, blood loss, hours of fasting. I needed something nutritional but simple.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I found myself standing at the stove, actually cooking for a stranger at 3:00 a.m. The absurdity of it was a physical weight in the room, but I refused to address it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A thought arrived, unbidden and cold: This moment is going to stay with me for a very long time. It is going to take considerable effort to scrub this out of my personal history. I pushed it aside and finished the food.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I placed the plate in front of him and stepped back. \"Eat,\" I commanded.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Cyan looked at the plate. Then he looked past it. His eyes were focused on a point somewhere in the middle distance, light-years away from my living room.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I waited. I am not a patient man by nature, and the specific patience I reserve for patients was rapidly eroding. A full minute passed in silence.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"I spent an hour, \" I stopped myself. I didn’t want to sound like a martyr. \"You need to eat.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He didn’t respond. He wasn’t absent, exactly; he was present but choosing to be somewhere else.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The irritation increased. Before I could fully think through the intimacy of the gesture, my hand was out. I gripped his chin and turned his face toward mine.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He was close. Far too close. I saw the purple of his eyes, the curve of his face, and then something happened. Something in my chest, or perhaps my stomach, somewhere that doesn’t have a clinical name, moved unexpectedly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I ignored it immediately. I am a doctor; I do not have \"flutters.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"If you don’t eat this,\" I said, my voice sharper than I intended, \"I will shove it down your throat myself. Do you understand me?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>His eyes focused then. Truly focused, all the way, for the first time tonight. We stayed like that for a beat, a silent, jagged exchange, before I released his chin. I set the plate firmly in his lap and walked away without looking back.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>From the kitchen, I pretended not to watch. He ate.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>When the plate was empty, I took it from him and rinsed it in the sink. I located a spare blanket and set it down beside him. It was the natural conclusion to the evening. My hand went to the light switch.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Leave it,\" Cyan said.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I stopped. The condescending comment was already on my tongue: What...are you afraid of the dark? But then I remembered the port. I remembered the blood in the shower. I did the arithmetic of what his night had looked like, and I swallowed the insult.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Fine,\" I said. I left the light on and went to my room.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. What the fuck am I doing? I asked the darkness. The ceiling, as usual, offered no diagnosis.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The \"imposter\" feeling arrived in full force. The person who had just cooked at 3:00 a.m. and left a light on for a stranger was wearing my face incorrectly. I was a man of cold facts and sharp edges, yet here I was, playing the role of a host to a stray.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Sleep took me anyway, a deep, heavy sleep that lasted significantly longer than my usual five hours.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The dream was vivid. We were on a rooftop, or perhaps a hospital floor that looked like one. Cyan was there, looking at me with an expression that wasn’t quite anger, though it resembled it from a distance. I found myself satisfied by that look, by the sheer, direct weight of being seen by him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the dream, I reached out. I took his face in my hands. I leaned in.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The \"almost\" of the kiss was what woke me.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>My own hand had moved in my sleep, reaching for a ghost.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I woke up to the sight of my own ceiling and the harsh brightness of the sun through the curtains.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The sheer horror of the dream settled in my gut like lead. I sat up, my head pounding, just as my phone began to ring.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lila. Her name blinked on the screen like a warning light. I looked at it for a long second before setting the phone face down on the nightstand. I didn’t have the bandwidth for her today. I didn’t want to hear her chirp like a broken machine about things that didn’t matter.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I checked the time. 11:00 a.m. I had slept for seven hours.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The dream returned, the lean, the almost-contact, and the horror doubled in weight. I actively tried to push it away. It’s better not to dwell on these things; forgetfulness is a survival skill.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Then, the reality hit.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He is in my living room.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The thought of a stray exotic bird entered my mind. The kind of bird that has been in a cage so long that freedom looks like catatonia.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I didn’t know where the analogy came from, and I didn’t care to examine it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I just knew that I had actually done this. I had brought a stranger into my sanctuary.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I appeared in the living room doorway. Cyan was still on the couch, his eyes closed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I actually did that, I told myself one last time for full effect. I turned to leave, hoping to slip away unnoticed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Bathroom,\" Cyan said, his eyes still closed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"So you were awake,\" I muttered.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He sat up. The morning light was everywhere now, unforgiving and bright.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Nothing was softened by the urgency of the crisis anymore.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the daylight, Cyan was... different. He was the kind of handsome that makes the word \"handsome\" feel like an insult to his bone structure.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was a face that handsome stops covering accurately because \"handsome\" implies a limit.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The flicker from last night returned, louder and less deniable. The dream followed It, uninvited, the lean, the kiss.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I felt my cheeks begin to warm, a physical reaction I have never experienced and for which I have no clinical framework.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>What followed was a special kind of horror I had never felt in my life.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I cleared my throat aggressively and pointed toward the second bathroom. I left the doorway as fast as I could without running.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I performed my morning routine with a certain level of violence.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I found extra towels, identified spare clothes, and made breakfast again without comment.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I put on a sensible news program. Cyan immediately changed it to cartoons. I looked at him, incredulous.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He didn’t look back; he just watched the animated characters with an intensity that bordered on the absurd.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Are you going to be all right here?\" I asked. \"I have a shift.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Nothing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I was past expecting answers. I found my old phone and set it on the cushion beside him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"My number is in it. The passcode is...\" I told him the numbers. I stood there for a moment, realizing I had just given a stranger my passcode and the keys to my life.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"There’s food in the fridge. If you need anything... call.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Nothing. The cartoon theme song played on. I walked to the door and left.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The drive to the hospital was a blur. I was surrounded by the normal city in the afternoon, but nothing felt normal.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I wasn’t thinking about Lila’s missed call or the upcoming shift.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I was thinking about the dream. The lean. The way his face looked in the sunlight. The way my own skin had betrayed me.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I attempted to snap out of it. I redirected my thoughts to my patient list. It failed. I worried about Cyan being alone in my apartment, which was a ridiculous thing to worry about given that he was a grown man who could clearly handle himself.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I pulled into the hospital parking lot and turned off the engine. I sat there for a long minute, gripping the steering wheel.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>*What the fuck is happening to me?*\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I didn’t have an answer. I got out of the car and went to work.\u003C\u002Fp>",1709,"2026-06-06T16:23:43.455Z",1,"novelbin.me","d9e2a430bce97a8905d26b022fea2111f7a108110dced4aca62667d5e963b6ac","bl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my-chapter-269","bl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my-chapter-267",307,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fbl-bound-to-my-enemy-the-billionaire-who-took-my-cover.jpg"]