Chapter 43
Kara - Present
He sits on the hood of the Tesla looking at the sky; the gravel crunching loudly in the surrounding stillness. The coldness of the air seeps under my jacket, making me shiver and goosebumps pepper my skin.
Owen spins something in his hand. The hard drive, spinning between his fingers.
Round, and round, and round.
I climb up onto the bonnet and lean back against the windscreen. We look at the clear night sky, the twinkling of the stars, the planes that are blinking miles above us, flying to some unknown destination. Somewhere better than here.
He leans back with me, and silence descends.
The distant sound of cars and a random siren are the only thing between us.
“Luca Knight saved me,” he finally says, breaking the horrendous silence.
I glance across, completely lost for words.
My story is carved into my bones, every sharp edge and jagged scar.
I know the moment I took James’ life—know it like my own heartbeat. It was the moment I said goodbye to Lucy.
What I had never known is how deep the ripples ran, how they dragged down the people I loved, no, love.
I thought it would be a blessing. Maria, finally free. Owen given closure wherever he was.
I was so, so wrong.
It wasn’t an ending. It was the beginning of his undoing.
“James’ body was found in an alleyway across from his local pub. But I guess you already know that.” His voice is measured, but there’s something beneath it, something fractured and broken. He glances down at me, his face unreadable.
“Earlier that month, I had been released from serving two years in prison. Two years for attacking Harry and his dickhead friends for what they did to you. I found Maria, I found James. But you—” His throat bobs as he swallows. “You were nowhere.”
I feel the weight of his words, feel them settle into the hollow broken space in my chest.
“Two years was plenty of time for me to disappear.”
“I always wondered why you never testified.” His voice tightens, tension coiling between us like a snake. “You were the one person who could have told the court what really happened that night. Told them what Harry had done. I called and wrote letters. Nothing.”
I let out a breath, but it does nothing to steady the guilt.
“If I had known, I’d have been there. In a heartbeat.
When you left, it was bad.” Memories crash over me, sharp and unforgiving.
“He took my phone, my freedom. Cut off every lifeline. I had no idea you even tried to reach me. He made me believe you had left. That as soon as you could, that you just left me.” My voice catches, and I swallow past it.
Owen shakes his head, the movement stiff, his jaw locked. “Surely someone from school would have told you they had pressed charges. You could have put two and two together.”
“I was already gone. Harry’s party was the start of the holidays, with no phone, no school. I had no way of knowing.” My voice carries the weight of everything I did. Every action, decision, regret. “I didn’t stay long, Owen. I couldn’t. I ran. Lived on the streets, barely surviving each night.”
His nostrils flare as his hands clench into fists. “And that’s where Andrews found you.”
The silence that follows is suffocating. Because we both know Andrews finding me wasn’t the salvation he hoped for me. In his eyes, it was just another type of prison.
“I still care about you. Not one day, Luce, have I stopped caring. Not one.” His eyes bore into mine, unrelenting, and it’s too much.
I turn away. I have to. Because Owen sees too much, always has. Because when he looks at me like that, it’s like he’s peeling back every single shitty layer I’ve ever built to protect myself.
“So why did they think you killed James?”
He exhales sharply, a bitter grin pulling at his lips.
“I beat the shit out of him earlier that night. God, it felt good turning the tables on him. But the whole pub had seen it. I threatened to kill him, then a few hours later, he turns up dead. I was suspect number one, and there were enough witnesses and evidence from our earlier fight to charge me.”
My chest tightens. “Owen, I—I’m so fucking sorry.”
His shrug is forced, too casual, but his jaw clenches and won’t look at me. “It is what it is.”
“Hey.” I sit up, shifting closer. “Owen, I mean it. I am sorry. For everything. I was so angry at you all, I honest to God thought you had just left me. And you were everything—” My voice catches, emotion clawing at my splintered chest. “You were everything that was good in my life. And then I was empty.”
His grip tightens around the hard drive, his knuckles whitening.
When he speaks, his voice is low, laced with something close to betrayal.
“You see, Luce, that’s what hurts the most.” His words are slow.
“That after everything—after every shitty moment in our childhood, after every good moment we found in between the bad—you believed I could leave you.”
“I don’t—”
“I loved you.” His voice cracks, just a little, but the weight of it hits like a fist. “I still fucking love you. And you thought I could walk away? Just leave you in that hellhole?” He lets out a harsh breath, shaking his head before suddenly grabbing the hard drive and launching it into the gravel.
It hits with a dull thud, bouncing before coming to a stop.
“Owen.” I jump up.
“Leave the fucking thing,” he says, anger rolling off him. “I’m so sick of people manipulating us, pulling the strings, planting doubt. But what I can’t work out, Luce—”
He steps closer, voice lower now, raw and unfiltered.
“Is how the fuck you could think that about me? How can you look me in the eye and paint me as the villain? Because it’s ripped my goddamn heart out.”
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. Owen stands facing me, chest heaving, hands fisted in his hair before he drops them to his sides, waiting. Just waiting for me to reply.
Such a simple question.
How?
How could I think that?
But nothing comes. Because I don’t know. Because maybe I am that broken. Maybe I’ve spent so many years being lied to, being twisted into what Andrews needed me to be, that I can’t tell the difference between truth and manipulation anymore.
“I can’t do this—I’m sorry.” I turn, needing space, air, something—
Owen grabs my wrist.
“No. Not this time.” His grip is firm, but not painful. His voice low and steady. “You’re not running. No one’s shooting at us. No distraction. There’s nothing else going on right now. It’s just me and you, under the stars, talking about an insignificant moment.”
“But it’s not though, is it?” My voice breaks, chin dropping as I squeeze my eyes shut, because I can’t take it—his pain, his anger, the weight of my actions and choices. “Nothing about us is insignificant.”
Owen exhales, and then he’s in front of me, tilting my chin up, forcing my eyes to meet his.
“There it is.” His voice is softer, but no less intense.
“The realisation! Nothing in our lives, Luce, is insignificant. You’ve been taught someone else’s values and morals.
You’ve been hard coded to be exactly what Andrews wanted you to be—a weapon.
But I see through it. I see you. The scared little girl who grew up in a broken system, in a crappy foster home, with someone who loved her more than anything else in the world.
” He swallows hard, his hand still on my chin, holding me there.
Making me listen. “You’ve pushed back every real emotion because it’s easier.
You made me the villain because it’s easier than facing the truth.
That we are both to blame for our past. Not just me. ”
“Owen—”
“And yet, you stand there, and all I see is a coward.” His voice cuts through the night, straight into my chest, sharp and painful.
“Still wanting to run at the first opportunity because that’s easier than dealing with the emotions clawing at your throat, ripping at your chest, screaming to be let out.
But you won’t. You’re still biting your tongue.
Still shoving them down into that fucking box where you lock everything away. Why?”
He steps into me, and I step back. But it’s not enough. His words are already there, circling around me, pressing and suffocating. Because he’s right. Every single fucking word he’s said is right.
Something has shifted and I have nothing. No quick retort. No sarcastic remark. No anger to misdirect. Nothing but the cold, crushing realisation that everything I’ve built my life around has been a lie.
James told me he had run.
That he didn’t care. That I wasn’t worth fighting for.
Andrews said he searched for him but couldn’t find him. And I believed him.
Because believing him meant there was a reason for the emptiness. Because if Owen had been out there, I would have gone to him. And that wasn’t what Andrews wanted.
That wasn’t how he could manipulate me, to mould me, to break me, to make me his.
He used my love against me.
He twisted my past, carved it into a weapon, and aimed it straight at my fucking heart.
I’m so stupid.
Owen exhales sharply, shaking his head. “I would never have left you there. And I’m sorry that you feel guilty, that you think you’re responsible for me going to prison.”
“I am.”
His jaw tightens, but he nods. “Yeah, you are. But you didn’t know that’s what would happen, otherwise you’d never have done it. You killed someone who tormented and raped you. You killed someone who was already dying. I don’t blame you for it, Luce.”
I close my eyes, a shuddering breath slipping past my lips.
His palm rests on my cheek, warm against the cold night, his touch grounding me when everything else feels like it’s slipping away. A tendril of my hair brushes my face, and he tucks it behind my ear, his fingers lingering against my skin.
“I can’t blame you for that. If he was still breathing, we’d be going there next.”
“How do we move forward?” My voice cracks, because honestly, I don’t know.
We’re standing in the wreckage of everything that we thought was true. And that wreckage and chaos, it isn’t just ours—it’s tangled in the middle of something bigger than us. The biggest conspiracy, the most catastrophic corruption the UK has ever seen. And here we are, in the thick of it.
Owen doesn’t hesitate. “We face it together.”
He lifts his pinkie.
I stare at it.
It’s stupid and childish.
But yet—
When I meet his eyes, my chest tightens in a different way.
A warmth spreads through me, fragile and hesitant, but it’s there. A flicker of something that I thought had burnt out years ago.
Hope.
“Just like we used to.” I wrap my finger around his.
The second our fingers entwine, he pulls me to him, his hands cradling my face, his breath warm against my lips. My pulse pounds against my ribs, wild and chaotic. Then his mouth crashes to mine.
It’s not soft, it’s not careful. It’s desperate and unyielding, a collision of anger, and grief, and forgiveness, and all the things left unsaid between us. His lips claim mine with a fierceness that leaves no room for any doubt, any space for hesitation.
We stand beneath the stars, in the stillness of the evening, wrapped in something far bigger than the chaos surrounding us.
Where there is absolutely nothing insignificant about us.