Chapter 2 Makenna
TWO
MAKENNA
NOW…
I glance over my shoulder as I fumble with the key. My body is on alert, as if I’m expecting him to appear out of the shadows.
I swallow down the pain spreading through my chest. I have to keep moving. Because when he realises I’m gone, he’s going to hunt me down and drag me back. I’m not savvy enough to outrun a man like him. And I’m not ready to face him. Not yet.
Distance gives me space to breathe. To think. So running feels safer than staying and less painful than watching the life I built trickle down the drain.
At least it did in the moment. Now the weight of it all presses down on me and the darkness makes shadows pulse in the corners of the car park.
I should have stayed…
I should have tried.
You did. Multiple times.
I couldn’t reach him anymore and I was done being hurt. I feel like a coward for running, even though I did everything I could to make him see the problems between us.
So I ran because that’s what I always do when things get hard, when they feel too big.
The light behind me flickers and my heart leaps into my throat. It’s almost as if I can feel him breathing against my nape, his heat, his solid frame behind me, but I’m alone. I’m always alone these days.
Even so, he’s not going to let me go, but I had to find control somehow even if everything else around me is spinning.
I want to believe he still cares, but he’s been… distant. I don’t know what else to do.
My hands shake and it takes three attempts to get steady enough to unlock the door. I don’t know what I’m running from anymore—him, myself, the fear of remaining unseen and unloved…
I shove the door open and slip inside, fumbling for the switch. The light stutters on, humming softly as it bathes the room in a soft glow. It does nothing to chase the gnawing pain in my gut.
It’s not the worst place I’ve stayed in over the years, but it’s a far cry from the home I left behind. Our home. A musty smell clings to the old furniture scattered around the room and the floral comforter spread over the bed looks worn.
I shut the door behind me, tossing the key onto the sideboard. Stopping is a mistake, but I’m bone-deep exhausted and too tired to drive further. I’m too tired to care if I’m caught either.
To erase those years I thought we were living the dream. But that’s all it was—a dream.
I drop my bag at the foot of the bed like it’s filled with bricks and not carrying my whole life inside it.
I got pretty good at packing light. A lifetime getting dragged around different homes, never knowing where I was going to land, made me an expert at taking only the essentials.
I didn’t think I’d have to do that again.
Nausea squeezes my stomach, and awful, restless adrenaline spikes through my body like broken glass under my skin. I press a hand to my stomach, breathing through it. I am not adding vomit to this drama, so when acid climbs up my throat, I swallow it down.
My shoulders slump as I sink onto the edge of the mattress and I toe off my trainers. It’s like there are weights on my eyelids, pulling them closed.
I trail my fingers over the worn comforter, trying to ground myself. This isn’t living. It’s not even surviving. Running from town to town, staying in shitty hotels tucked away in places he wouldn’t expect, is grinding me down. But I can’t keep lying to myself anymore.
I tried.
Fuck, I really tried.
But a life laced with landmines isn’t safety. It’s an explosion waiting to happen. Better alone than wondering if I’m worth anything to him anymore.
I lie back. My hands drift to my churning stomach even though my limbs feel like lead. I just want to find a moment of stillness, but peace doesn’t come when the man you’re running from is the one who taught you how to disappear.
I’m losing my mind. Six days running without a direction, without a soft place to land feels like ten years. Six days looking over my shoulder waiting for him to find me before I can shore up my defences.
I press my face into the pillow like it might smother the anxiety building beneath the tension swelling inside me and I let my body float.
I don’t know how long I’m out, but when I wake the room is too quiet. I blink against the brightness of the lights, but I don’t move.
Because I’m not alone.
My lungs stutter, my heart too. I don’t twitch, not even my fingers as the weight of his presence fills the small hotel room.
“I know you’re awake.” His voice is a rasp in the silence, like gravel scraped over rocks.
For a second, I think I’m dreaming, but I’m not. He’s here and my body responds to him like it always does. Heat and relief. Heart and home.
Traitorous bitch.
Slowly, I roll onto my back, my head turning even further to the opposite side of the room.
He’s sitting against the wall, his jean-clad legs thrown out in front of him. The stubble he usually has is thicker, like he hasn’t stopped to shave, and his tee is wrinkled beneath his kutte, pulled tight around his broad shoulders.
I stare at the leather, my chin wobbling as I hold back my tears.
“How did you get in?” My voice is hoarse, as if I’ve been screaming in my sleep. Maybe I was. It feels like I’ve been screaming for months. “I locked the door.”
I don’t know why I ask that. There are a hundred other questions I should have led with—ones that I don’t know if he’ll ever give me the answers to.
Beneath the anger burning in his eyes is a spark of relief, like he didn’t know what he’d find when he caught up to me. “I picked it.”
I stare at him. “Of course you know how to do that.”
“It’s not hard. You just have to know how to align the pins.
They aren’t really meant to keep people out.
They’re an illusion so law-abiding suits feel safe in their beds.
” His rambling is familiar and comforting but the way his eyes darken is not.
“But I’m not a law-abiding suit, and there’s no door in this world that can keep me from you. ”
Yeah, he’s pissed.
The bite in his tone is one I’ve only ever heard him use with other people.
Never me. That’s why this is so hard. I know he loves me, or he loves me in the only way he can, and that isn’t even the problem.
The issue is him disappearing and sneaking back into my life like I’m a pit stop between club jobs.
My stomach sinks, churning again like there’s a storm raging inside me, mirroring the one building in this room.
“I don’t know why I expected you to give a fuck about my boundaries.”
He stands slowly, and I sit up in the bed, ready to put it between us if I need to. I don’t fear him hurting me, not physically. He doesn’t need to lay a hand on me. He’s already destroyed me a thousand ways without ever lifting a finger.
“When your boundaries put you a hundred miles from me in a shit-stained hotel room in some dump of a place, no. I don’t give a fuck.”
My tongue feels coated in sand at how level and controlled his tone is. He’s holding back but I’ve pushed him to his limit with this.
I should stop. But I’ve never been smart, and my mouth has a mind of its own. “Still better than what I left behind,” I mutter.
I want it to wound and it does. He flinches like I’ve shoved a blade into his chest. I expect to feel satisfaction at hurting him the way he’s hurt me, but I don’t.
I just feel flayed open and empty.
Zane’s brows draw together, and I can see he’s trying to figure out what I mean. “You left behind a good life.”
I scoff, because he just doesn’t see it, and I’ve tried to get him to so many times. I told him I didn’t feel important, that I needed more from him and he’d frowned at me. Then he’d kissed my forehead and said I was the most important thing to him in this world before he left.
For a week.
“Well, you can get on your bike and go back to that good life alone. Tell me how it feels to sit in that apartment without me, eat meals for one, and then have me turn up once a week to fuck you and leave.”
The silence is unbearable. I don’t think he’s breathing. He hasn’t taken his attention off me, but he’s frozen in that way he gets when his head is spinning problems.
“You think I don’t want to wake up next to you every day? That I don’t want to eat with you, watch you smile and light up?”
“I think you’ve made it clear how you feel, Zane.”
The way he tenses makes me want to wrap my arms around him even as my chest aches. He’s trying to understand, but I don’t know how to explain the loneliness I feel to him anymore. The way I need him so much my heart breaks when he’s gone.
The way I feel like I’m nothing to him and that it hurts more than if he’d just erased me from his life completely.
He steps closer, his hands fisting at his sides. Molten rage burns through him. “You think I’d ever fucking allow you to just disappear from my life?”
My heart thumps, solid and heavy in my chest. I’m not scared of him, but I am afraid what I might do in the heat of the moment, so I slip off the bed, putting it between us like a barrier—just in case I’m tempted to go to him.
He reads it wrong, of course he does. He thinks I’m protecting myself from his anger.
Zane’s eyes flash, his jaw flexing like bands wrapped around the bones, but when he speaks his voice is shattered. “Firefly.”
The name he gave me all those years ago usually covers me like a warm blanket, but right now, it’s a gut punch.
“Don’t.” I stop him before he can crawl under my skin, before he can make me doubt myself. “Just… Don’t.”
The war raging inside him barely crosses his face, but I see the signs. The way his teeth grind together, the hardness in his eyes, even the way he’s standing perfectly still, not a hint of movement, like he’s scared he’ll crumble if he does.