Chapter 38 Estella
My thoughts drag through sludge. My palms are damp again, slick with useless sweat, and I’ve washed them so many times they feel almost raw. I’m tired of it—of the nerves, the repetition, the constant cycle of trying to scrub the anxiety out of my skin.
I’m waiting in a surprisingly decent motel, though I haven’t bothered to memorize the address.
Somewhere on the outskirts of the city, tucked between the trees and the faint hum of the highway.
The room is warm, dressed in neutral tones that should’ve soothed me.
But there’s one thing that knocks the balance off.
There are three beds here.
I thumb the side of my phone, lighting up the screen again. Twenty minutes. Only twenty goddamn minutes. Time behaves differently when you’re burning alive on the inside—slower, heavier, stretched thin across every fucking second.
So when the handle on the door shifts, the sound is so soft I almost think my mind invented it. But then, a muffled voice threads through the quiet, and my body reacts before I can think. I jump off the bed, feet slapping the floor, and sprint toward the entrance.
A gust of cold air rolls into the corridor, brushing over my bare arms and raising goosebumps across my skin. Damp strands of my hair stick to my neck, icy and irritating, but all of that evaporates the second I see him.
Heat erupts inside me, white-hot and merciless, burning through everything in its path. Adrenaline cuts straight through the exhaustion, sharp enough to make my lips twitch with the fury simmering beneath.
Dante steps in behind Cane, and his eyes lock onto mine like a starving animal spotting water. My fists curl on instinct, nails biting into my palms, but beneath the fury, something unwelcome stirs.
Concern. Because he looks… destroyed.
Worse than he did after I stabbed him. Blood spatters stain his face, neck, hands, and shirt.
One sleeve is gone entirely, ripped off and haphazardly tied around his arm—dirty-white cloth soaked through with deep, dark red.
And the throbbing wound I left in him is swollen, the black stitches tight and angry against his skin.
A flash of jealousy ignites at the realization. Someone had stitched him. Touched him. Dared to help him.
“Estella,” he breathes.
I shut my eyes, hating the way he speaks my name—too soft, too reverent, too effortless, like a trap I’m aching to fall into. For one terrifying heartbeat, it nearly makes me forget.
Nearly.
When I look at him now, my whole mind urges me to lunge. To carve new holes into him. To make him feel something that mirrors even a fraction of what he’s put me through.
But I’m tired. Bone-deep fucking tired. Dawn always promises something better, some kind of clarity, but right now I feel none of it. Just this endless, suffocating nightmare with no beginning and no exit.
All of this has unfolded in a single night. The exhaustion weighs on me like wet concrete, pressing into my muscles, settling into my bones.
I want to sleep. I want to forget. I want to wake up in a world where none of this ever touched me. But seeing him here—bruised, battered, with that painfully hopeful gleam in his stupid eyes...
“What the fuck happened to you?” I ask at last, the words scraping out of me.
Both Cane and Dante jerk slightly, their gazes flicking between my face and my closed fists.
“Can I leave you to it and be sure you won’t stab him again?” Cane asks, voice cautious as he nods toward the kitchen. “I have to make a few calls.”
The muscle in my jaw tightens as I shut his question out and drag myself back toward the living room.
A single beat passes before the soft, uncertain sound of footsteps trails after me.
I drop onto the bed with more force than necessary, and Dante edges closer, lowering himself onto the corner of the mattress like he’s afraid I might snap.
For several stretched seconds, silence settles between us.
The storm has finally spent itself, leaving the world washed and breathless.
Thin rays of sunlight pierce the breaking clouds, the first hints of dawn pressing weak gold into the gloom.
They spill into the dark room, catching on drifting dust and broken shadows, giving shape and color to the space.
I turn my head toward him, and the light lands across his face. It paints every line of exhaustion, every buried ache—physical and emotional—until the sight of it stings tears into my eyes.
As much as I hate it, as much as I wish it would all disappear, nothing between us ever evaporated.
The pull remains—cosmic, magnetic, an invisible gravity dragging us together even now.
And strangest of all, after I stabbed him, something in that connection only deepened, binding us tighter when logic says it should have snapped.
Clicking my tongue in irritation, I shift closer.
He goes still, watching every move I make as I reach for his arm and begin unwrapping the pathetic excuse for a bandage.
Blood bursts out instantly, and the moment I catch sight of the weak, crooked stitches poking from his skin—along with the unmistakable bite marks—my eyes widen, and shock rolls through me in a sharp wave.
“What…” The word slips out, thin and useless. The only real question roaring through my head is What the actual fucking fuck? but I swallow it back, scrambling for something less raw, less revealing.
I refuse to let him see the full scope of how much he still matters. “What happened?” I finally manage, barely more than a whisper.
He drags in a breath, his chest trembling at the top of the inhale. “Lucia locked me in the cage. I thought she might try it, so I hid the key in my arm. It let me get out.”
Bile surges up my throat as my mind forms the image—him trapped, injured, cutting into himself for the key—and I have to look away. My face twists with the shock before suspicion rushes in to replace it. “Who’s Lucia?” I ask, hating the jealous edge clinging to the words.
“Oh, well.” He wets his lips. “She, um… was on my team. We were just friends.”
I chew the corner of my mouth until the skin protests, then push off the bed and head toward the bathroom.
My imagination betrays me instantly—showing me a woman near him, touching him, helping him while he worked behind my back.
The thought sinks sharp teeth into my chest, and I bite down harder on my lip, breaking the skin.
Tears burn again as I rummage through the bathroom, searching for the medical kit. Cane stocked this place well. There’s no universe in which I believe the owners of this motel gave a fuck enough to leave a giant kit full of medical supplies lying around.
I carry it back to the bed and drop it down with a frustrated thud before sitting beside it and yanking the zipper open.
I can feel Dante’s gaze on me, steady and worried, as my fingers sift through scissors, needles, painkillers, and an entire arsenal of supplies, each item clinking softly beneath my hands.
But the ball of jealousy swells too quickly, and something inside me snaps. I shove the medical kit toward him and slide onto the floor, turning my face away before he can see the wreck I’m becoming.
It hurts too much to look at him. And he’s a grown man, so he’s more than capable of handling his own fucking wound.
I feel the weight of his stare drilling into my back before he finally begins rummaging through the supplies.
The sound of bottles clinking and tools shifting fills the quiet.
I drag the heel of my palm across my eyes and cheeks, wiping away the tears with a force that only irritates my already burning skin.
God, I must look like a blotchy nightmare.
I fix my gaze on a random spot on the wall, refusing to give him even a fraction of my attention. He moves in silence, focused on the work—or pretending to be—and despite everything clawing inside me, curiosity slithers through the cracks.
I just know he’s doing a terrible job. He’s proven that already. I mean, look at what he did to himself.
My suspicion is confirmed when I finally glance over and catch sight of him.
He looks absolutely lost, his brows drawn together as he squints at the wound, trying to squeeze it, trying to stitch it, failing in increasingly dramatic ways.
Blood is everywhere, pooling across his skin, dripping onto the sheets like he’s determined to recreate a crime scene.
“Jesus Christ,” I hiss, scrambling back onto the bed and grabbing his wrist, pulling his hand onto my legs. “You really can’t do shit on your own.”
Carefully—because apparently someone has to be the adult here—I disinfect the wound, already knowing he skipped that step entirely.
Then I rip out the pathetic little thread he loaded into the needle, since it’s insultingly short, and rethread it properly, sliding a new line through the needle’s eye with practiced ease.
“I can’t argue with that,” he murmurs, soft and somehow apologetic.
I focus on stitching him up, swallowing hard against the emotion thick in my throat.
I squeeze my eyes shut every few moments, fighting off the tears that just keep threatening to spill, the ones I can’t seem to stop, no matter how viciously I will them away.
Silence falls over us, heavy and fragile, broken only by Cane’s muffled voice drifting from somewhere in the kitchen.
But here, in this small circle of light and shadow, it feels like we’re the only two people in the world.
And after everything, I’m not sure I like that feeling anymore.