Chapter 38 #3
It’s stupid to say, but shit, I’ll try anything.
She laughs again, brittle, almost soundless, like it hurts her throat to make the noise.
“I guess we’re both liars then. And Smoke-drunk me vaguely remembers you saying that you didn’t want me to regret you in the morning.
Yet here we are.” She lifts her hands. “I wanted Hatter. Not Hatton Fury. I don’t know who that monster is.
” Her gaze scalds me as she glares over my hands, my chest, my face, like she’s seeing all of it for the first time. “I don’t know who you are.”
Her words land hard, but… I take them. Because the look on her face isn’t just anger anymore. It’s betrayal, and I don’t know what to do with that one. She’s right, I did betray her, and there’s nothing I can say to undo the damage I’ve done.
“I’m the man keeping you safe,” I say eventually. It’s the only truth I know how to give her now.
Her voice cracks, but she doesn’t stop. “Except your family’s obsession is what screwed everything up.
What your brother did, kidnapping Luna—we lost people because of him.
Friends,” she whispers, then seethes. “It’s all your fault any of this happened.
I wouldn’t have had to run if it weren’t for you. ”
“The Wildes are the enemy, Lucy. Not us. Maybe our fathers should’ve left drunken bets alone, but they didn’t. The pact is what it is now, and the Wildes know about it. They already came for the other daughters, and they’ll come for you too, Lucy. I refuse to let that happen.”
The shift is instant. Her fury stalls, replaced by something wary.
“Daughters?” she repeats. “You said other daughters. Plural.”
My pulse thunders.
Shit.
“They only came for Luna,” she tries to clarify, but the certainty is already draining from her voice. “And I ran the morning Brylie left for the airport. Brylie’s safe.” She swallows. “She’s in Italy.”
Silence stretches like a horror movie hallway, and I watch it fill with everything she’s beginning to understand.
“Say she’s in Italy, Hatton.” Her voice comes out small. Young. The vulnerability there cracks my ribcage wide open.
“Baby…You should sit down,” I reach for her hand. She snatches it back.
“Say she’s in Italy, Hatton. Say. It.”
I close my eyes because I can’t look at her and do this.
“I can’t.”
Her small whine is so pitiful, the whispered question that follows gut-wrenching.
“Why, Hatton?”
When I’m brave enough to open my eyes, hers are brimming with tears. Mine burn too at how I’m hurting her at every turn, and I dig my nails into my palms to keep from going to her. She told me not to touch her, and at this point, the least I can do is give her that, even if it’s fucking killing me.
My mouth opens and I taste iron. I want to get it out before it breaks her worse, before it breaks me too, but I don’t get the chance.
Because Lucy McKennon is the Princess of Las Vegas, the secrets capitol of our world.
She’s smart, so fucking smart, and she’s already putting it together—the story I told her about my brother’s girl, the accident, the coma, the family that won’t let him see her…
I see the exact moment it all clicks, because her face crumbles and her hands fly to her mouth, and the sob that rips out of between her fingers is…
heartbreaking. The sound is one of the worst things I’ve heard in my life.
“Your brother’s girlfriend. She’s… Brylie?”
“I’m sorry.” The words are worthless, paper thin. “I’m so fucking sorry, Lucy—”
“No,” she whispers. “No. No. No.”
I cross the space between us in two strides. “Lucy—”
She jerks back and her voice comes out cold and steady, and absolutely lethal.
I stop.
“Touch me, Hatton Fury, and you won’t need to worry about my father. I will kill you myself.”
A promise, not a threat.
My phone buzzes again in her hand, the small, polite sound shocking through the cabin like a thunderclap. She looks down before I can stop her, and whatever she sees drains the last color from her face until she looks translucent, like the morning light could pass right through her.
“Dash Fury texted you a voice message.”
“Dash?” My heart thunders as she presses the screen. “Fuck, wait, Lucy, don’t—”
Dash’s voice fills the cabin, and I know before he finishes his first sentence that there’s no coming back from this.
“Hey, I don’t know when you’ll get this, but.” My brother’s voice breaks. “They did it. The Wildes made their move like we thought. It’s done.” A breath shudders into the speaker. “Brylie Luciano is dead.”
Lucy’s wail is like a gunshot to my chest, and I can’t stop myself now as I go to her, every instinct in my body screaming to hold her because fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck she doesn’t know—
She throws her hand up again between us, palm flat, arm locked.
“No.”
So I freeze. I stand still and I watch her shatter, hating myself more than I ever have—and that’s saying something for a guy who’s despised himself since he was thirteen years old.
Dash keeps talking, his voice cracked and raw. “I’ll be gone for a while. I don’t know how long. Fuck… I hate that it had to come to this.” He exhales a sigh so exhausted, so deep, it’s bottomless. “Do better than I could, brother. Don’t wait until it’s too late. Keep your girl safe.”
The voice message ends. The cabin goes quiet except for Lucy’s breathing, heavy but somehow eerily even.
She presses her back against the door, fingers curling around the handle behind her. Her eyes are bright with tears that haven’t fallen yet, held back by sheer force of will alone, a lifetime of practice at not breaking in front of other people.
“I’m leaving.” Her voice is barely above a whisper. “Don’t watch me. Don’t follow me. Stay away from me.”
Then her chin trembles once, violently, and the tears she’s been holding spill in two clean lines down her cheeks.
“I never want to see you again, Hatton Fury. You hear me? Never. Get the fuck off Wander Isle.”
Then she stops, and her voice drops to something barely audible and hollowed out.
“Or don’t. I don’t care what you do anymore. I’m done. With everything.”
Done? What the fuck does “done” mean?
She turns to leave and my heart stutters. “Lucy, please—”
She throws the phone at me, and I catch it on instinct, fingers closing around the case just as the door swings open.
Cold air rushes in, carrying the sound of waves and seagulls, and she steps onto the boat deck without looking back.
The door swings shut with a hollow thud that reverberates through the cabin like the last note of a song that will never play again, shutting me off from her world and leaving me in silence.
I stand there, heart hammering, the room too quiet and too bright and too empty.
The phone vibrates in my hand. I don’t look at it.
I stumble back and sink onto the edge of the bed, where the sheets are still warm and still smell like her, and press the heels of my palms into my eyes as my chest aches with something I wish I’d said out loud.
Dash is gone. Brylie’s dead. The Wildes are moving. Castle’s still out there running a board none of us know the rules to.
But that’s not what hurts.
What hurts is that for one night, my wife let me see her, let me touch her, let me hold her.
She gave me her body and soul, she told me every secret, every fear, every dark and broken thing she’d carried alone since she was seven years old.
And I held her on a frozen beach and let her believe she was safe.
Which means, for one night, Lucy McKennon let me love her. And I… I think she might’ve loved me back.
Hatter had something Hatton Fury has only ever dreamed of. Her trust.
And I destroyed it.