Chapter Ninety
Asher
Jay’s voice comes through the door before he does.
“Calder’s ten minutes out. You’re going to drag that sack of shit into the lobby and hold his sorry ass up because Calder won’t surrender without a goodbye kiss.”
Jay stalks in, but I don’t look. Don’t care.
That one word.
Surrender.
Raine’s giving herself up. For me. To get me out because…because…
She didn’t see my signal.
She thinks I’m already gone. That Voss has broken me.
The note slips from my hand and hits the table, the sound too loud in the silence of the room. My vision blurs. I can’t see it, can’t make my fingers work well enough to find it. And the panic of losing that one tether, the only part of her I have left, is worse than anything else—
There. Damp, soft edges. Crinkled paper.
Ten minutes.
I can’t stop what’s coming. None of it.
My throat works, the shape of a sound that never arrives. Something that would be despair if they hadn’t already stolen the one thing I had left to express it with.
Taking my voice is the cruelest thing they’ve done. With it, I could tell her—
I reach for her face. The color of her eyes in the morning light. The gold flecks in the brown. They blur and I lose them completely. Where… Why can’t I find them? The way she looks at me…
The tea cup. How she trusted me to hold it when she didn’t have the strength.
“I need to see your hands.”
Her huff. Almost a laugh, but better. I reach for the sound of it. I can’t…it’s gone. She’s not there—in my head—not like before.
I’d memorized every detail. Every one. And now…
I can’t.
The room goes soft. The edges of the table gone. I don’t feel the cuffs anymore.
I could let go. I won’t have to watch Voss take her. Won’t lose…
Goodbye.
The word cuts through the static. Jay said… He…
Goodbye kiss.
She traded everything she had left for this. To touch me.
My left thumb drifts to my index finger. Raine’s tell. Raine’s movement.
Raine.
The door opens again. Two guards release the cuffs from the table. I let them bear my weight. I need whatever strength I have left—all of it—to kiss Raine.
Reaching for the last thing I said to her, I snag the edges and hold tight. The words are worn—like the note clutched in my hand—but still true.
“I’m choosing you too.”