Chapter 32 #3
But you can’t control who breaks your heart, and you can’t save your way to redemption when you’re the one who caused the destruction.
She can’t hide from this truth, and I can’t save her from it.
We’re both completely exposed, and there’s nowhere left to run.
“I didn’t know.” Even as I say it, I know it doesn’t matter. My hands killed her parents.
How can she ever look at me again?
Chaos finally, thankfully, regretfully, erupts around us as my cousins and my men burst into the clearing.
“No!” Chief screams. It’s terrifying in its guttural pain, and it’s what has me lifting my head in time to see Terra reach for Clover, a sharp blade in her hand.
I move on instinct alone, everything in my body telling me to put space between Clover and that blade, but she doesn’t need me.
Everything happens five feet away, and I still struggle to process what’s happening.
The instant Terra’s hand clasps over Clover’s shoulder, Clover’s fist kicks up then back, hitting Terra right in the nose.
Then she rams her elbow backward into Terra’s gut.
Clover spins herself around so she has Terra in a chokehold I had no idea she could execute while also squeezing Terra’s wrist until she drops the knife.
When Clover’s gaze finds mine, I have the distinct feeling that she’s surprised herself even more than she’s surprised me.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Chief chuckles as Roman’s team circles Clover. “All that training paid off after all.”
More men converge on Chief with first aid supplies, asking about injuries.
But I can’t hear them over Clover’s silent tears.
Over Terra’s voice infiltrating my mind. “Good boy. Such a good boy.”
Because all I can focus on is Clover’s face—the woman I love—staring at me as though I’m a stranger.
A team leads Terra past us in handcuffs. Her bloodied face is almost serene, as if she’s happy with the outcome.
She spent twenty years trying to destroy what Clover and I had. In the end, she didn’t need elaborate plans.
She only needed the truth.
We have Terra in custody, but we may never get the answers we seek.
“Get them both out,” Roman orders. “Separately.”
Separately.
Of course. Separately.
How could it be any other way now?
As Sterling hauls me upright, I catch one last glimpse of Clover. She’s standing perfectly still with her arms held tightly at her sides.
She’s not crying or hiding.
She trusted me enough to let me in completely.
And I destroyed her.
The drive back is silent.
My head is pounding with memories I longed for and now wish I could forget.
The compound. The other children. Terra’s weird fascination with Clover—girls in general, but especially Clover. Clover’s small hand in mine as we hid in our tree. The stories she told about Prince Valor defeating the evil stepmother, Terrantuella.
She always believed in me.
Prince Valor. The protector. The savior.
What a fucking joke.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Sterling says quietly. “You were a child that she manipulated. You’re supposed to be able to trust your mother.”
“Does that bring Clover’s parents back?” I snap.
He doesn’t answer. We both know it doesn’t.
“I love her,” I say. The words taste like poison because that’s what I am, what my entire family has been to her.
“I feel as though I’ve loved her my whole life.
And I’m the reason she grew up in that hellhole without her parents.
My mother is the reason she spent twenty years afraid of her own shadow, afraid to speak up, to stand out, to fucking live. ”
All those times I held her, when she would melt into my arms as though she’d found her home. All the times she trusted me with her heart.
And all this time, I’ve been the monster who condemned her to hell.
“Don’t make this decision for her,” Sterling says. “Don’t push her away because you’ve decided you’re not worthy.”
I dig my fingernails into my palms. I’m not at all worthy, but saying that to him will do no good. “She stared at me as if she didn’t know me anymore, Sterling. It doesn’t take a PhD to understand I don’t have a decision to make here.”
“V, she just found out that the love of her life was unknowingly involved her parents’ death. Give her time.”
I wish I could believe him. I want to believe that there’s a path forward for us after this.
But how? How do you ask someone to love the one person responsible for all their pain?
When we reach the inn, I go straight to my room and lock the door.
I sit on the bed where I held her only last night. Where I promised I’d never let anyone hurt her again.
What a fucking lie. What a beautiful, hopeful, devastatingly misguided lie.
Outside my door, I hear voices. Madi. Savvy. Others rallying around Clover, and the knot twisting in my gut gives me a moment of reprieve.
Madi’s voice is fierce and protective. “You’re not alone. We’re your family.”
Then Savvy, softer, but no less determined. “We don’t abandon our people. Not ever.”
And Elle. “Whatever you need. Whatever you both need.”
The last part catches in my chest. They’re not just rallying around Clover. They’re sitting with her, outside a door I can’t open, including me in their love, even knowing what I’ve done.
She needs them. She needs the people who have helped her build a life, not those of us who destroyed it.
People who can hold her without the weight of murder between them.
I stare at my hands. These hands that built a company to save hundreds of lives, but all I can see is oil and darkness and the face of an eight-year-old boy who just wanted his mother’s approval.
He got it—at the cost of his future.
Outside my window, the moon rises over Happiness as one thought runs through my mind on a loop—Clover let down her walls for me, and I burned her fortress to the ground.
Now we’re both standing in the ashes, and I don’t know if either of us will survive.