Chapter 3 Cloe
CLOE
The first thing I heard was the monitor.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Too clean. Too steady. The kind of sound that didn’t belong to the living. It belonged to survivors. To ghosts still tethered by machines. To girls with blood under their nails and regret behind their eyes.
Girls like me.
My body ached. Like I’d been dropped into something cold and left there too long. My limbs didn’t feel like mine anymore. They were weight and memory and consequence.
My mouth was dry. My tongue stuck to the roof of it, thick and useless. And my throat burned like I’d swallowed something sharp—metal, maybe. Regret. Rust.
I blinked once. Light flared overhead—low and sterile, too dim to be comforting and too bright to feel safe. It painted the world in sick tones, the kind of light that made even the living look like ghosts.
Ceiling tiles stared back at me. A faint hum from the wall behind my head buzzed against my skull. The air smelled too clean. Not like bleach. Not like medicine. Just... clinical.
This wasn’t a hospital. It was something more private. More dangerous. A place where people didn’t come to heal.
They came to be kept.
I turned my head. Slowly. Each movement came with its own threat of betrayal. My neck pulled. My ribs screamed. Even the muscles in my jaw felt tight.
There were no nurses. No doors opening down the hall. No carts squeaking or rubber soles scuffing tile. Just a room. A bed. A silence I recognized.
Then I saw him.
Loyal.
Sitting in the corner. Not moving. Not blinking. Like he’d been carved from the wall itself. Like shadow had decided it needed a guardian.
One leg crossed. Arms folded. Hands relaxed—not clenched. Not loose. Just… ready. Elbows resting on the chair arms like he had all the time in the world and none of it belonged to me.
He didn’t look at the monitor. Didn’t glance at the door. He just watched me. Still. Steady. Absolute.
His gaze wasn’t angry. But it wasn’t kind. There was no mercy in his eyes. Just verdict. Like my blood had already been weighed and the sentence had already fallen.
My lips parted. I wanted to speak. Wanted to explain. To apologize. To ask what day it was. What happened after—
But no words came. None felt right. I didn’t know how to speak to the man who once laughed with me around a half-empty bottle and now sat like judgment itself.
So I whispered.
“Where…”
My voice cracked. It tasted like old pennies.
“Where am I?”
Loyal didn’t answer. Didn’t twitch. Didn’t even blink. Like I was already in the ground and he was just waiting for the dirt to settle.
Tears pressed hot behind my eyes. Not grief.
Shame.
Burning, acidic shame that coated the back of my throat like bile. I looked away. Blinked them back. Closed my eyes again like I could undo this by slipping away.
But sleep didn’t come. Only stillness. Only the quiet weight of being watched by someone who had nothing left to say.
It didn’t feel like waking. It felt like being studied. Like surveillance disguised as mercy. I drifted. Pain softened to a dull ache.
My breathing leveled out. Shallow. But steady. I let myself blur. Let the world smudge at the corners. But before I slipped under again, I felt it—
A weight at my side.
Blankets.
Someone pulling them higher.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Fingers—not rough, not gentle—tucking the edge beneath my arm. Up to my collarbone. A gesture. A ritual. Not affection. But presence.
I didn’t open my eyes. Didn’t ask who it was. I already knew. I just lay there, letting the warmth wrap around my throat like a thread. And I let the shame settle in my chest like a stone I knew I’d never lift again.
When I woke again—
Loyal was gone.
But I wasn’t alone.
I knew it before I opened my eyes. The room was different. Not louder. Not warmer. Just... heavier.
The air shifted. Bent around something larger than breath. I opened my eyes. And Wolfe was there. Standing at the foot of the bed. Still. Unmoving. Like he’d always been there. Like I was the one who had just arrived.
His gaze didn’t roam my body. Didn’t trail my bandages or trace the blood dried at the corner of my mouth. He wasn’t checking me. He was reading me. Measuring what was left. Like he already knew what I gave them. And what it cost him.
I didn’t speak. Couldn’t. My throat closed. My lungs caught on the inhale. My ribs warned me against anything too sudden. But it wasn’t the pain that kept me still. It was him. Wolfe.
His name rang in my chest like a memory wrapped in razors. He didn’t speak. Didn’t twitch. Didn’t let me have even that small mercy.
His coat hung open. Dark. Heavy. His shirt beneath it matched—no tie, no buttons fastened high. Just black on black. His hair was slicked back, careless, like he’d done it hours ago and then forgotten to exist in the mirror afterward.
His hands were in his pockets. His shoulders were relaxed. Not because he was calm. Because he was resolved. He wasn’t here for answers. He wasn’t here to rescue me. He wasn’t here to punish me.
He was here because I made a choice—and now I had to live inside it.
Or not.
He looked like silence. Like he wasn’t angry. Like he was finished. And that was worse.
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again, even slower. The words gathered like splinters behind my teeth. None of them right. None of them safe. But I said them anyway. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
It came out small. Fragile. The sound of someone already preparing to be disbelieved. Still, he said nothing. Not a blink. Not a nod. Just that stare. That fucking stare. Like I was nothing but an equation he’d already solved.
“I thought I could fix it—”
A twitch. His jaw shifted, sharp as a blade being drawn but not yet used. That was all I got. One flicker of tension. No words. No expression. Just the ghost of something deadly being buried again.
My stomach twisted. Shame rising like bile. “You don’t understand what they have on me,” I whispered. “I would’ve come to you—”
His voice cut through me like smoke sharpened into steel. “Would have.”
Two words. They landed harder than fists. Colder than the night I ran. I blinked. My breath shook. “I tried—”
“No,” he said. Crisp. Flat. Unshakeable. “You chose.”
I flinched. There was no volume to his voice. He didn’t need it. He stepped forward once. Slow. Intentional. Each footfall hit the tile like a closing door.
“You chose to lie.” Another step. “You chose to run.”
He was at the edge of the bed now. Close enough that I could feel his presence like a second skin. He didn’t reach for me. Didn’t need to. Just being there—looming over me—was enough to press all the air out of my lungs.
I pulled the blanket tighter around me, but it didn’t help. Nothing helped.
“I left the ring behind because I thought I was protecting you,” I said, barely able to push the words out. “Because I knew if you got involved—if you saw what they had—you’d burn everything down.”
“No,” he said again. But this time colder. Sharper. “You weren’t protecting me.” He leaned forward just a breath. “You were protecting yourself.”
That broke something. Something tight and buried. I wanted to cry. But I didn’t. Because I knew better. Wolfe didn’t assign value to tears. He assigned power to silence. And I had already spent mine.
He crouched—not all the way. Just low enough to make it personal. Intimate. I could see the shadows beneath his eyes. The tension in his throat. But not his mercy.
That was gone.
“You had your chance,” he murmured. Then softer. “And you chose the leash.”
I couldn’t breathe. Not from the pain. Not from the bruises, or the ribs that felt like splintered glass beneath my skin.
But from him. From the way he looked at me like I had never been anything but this—betrayal in skin. Like I hadn’t once stood in his kitchen barefoot, laughing. Like I hadn’t touched his face after nightmares. Like I hadn’t meant any of it.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Even though I knew it didn’t matter. Even though I could already feel the apology wither in the air between us.
It sounded small. Weak. Not enough. Nowhere near enough.
He rose slowly. Like gravity had simply changed its mind about him and he moved with it.
“You don’t get to say that,” he said.
No inflection.
Just a decree.
Something carved in stone.
My throat tightened. “Wolfe—”
“No.”
One word.
Full stop.
A judge slamming the gavel before I even got to the defense.
He turned. Paced a single step. Came back. Not rushed. Not urgent.
Measured. He didn’t look at me this time. Looked past me. Over me. Like I wasn’t worth eye contact anymore.
“You don’t get to cry. You don’t get to beg. You don’t get to ask me to understand.”
I closed my eyes. But the silence didn’t lift. If anything, it thickened.
“I gave you a chance to tell me the truth,” he said.
A beat.
“And you gave it to strangers.”
My stomach twisted. My fingernails dug into the blanket at my waist. “I didn’t mean to—”
“But you did.”
His voice didn’t rise. Didn’t bend.
It broke me instead.
He stepped closer. Just close enough that I could feel the space he took up. That I could feel the oxygen bending around him.
“You want mercy?” he asked.
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. My tongue felt like ash.
His voice dropped again, almost gentle. “Then you shouldn’t have made me choose between you and the truth.”
That was what gutted me. Not the accusation. But the truth of it. I bit my lip until I tasted blood.
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. Didn’t stop me. He just stood there. The man I loved. The man I left. The man who never stopped knowing I was his.
Until I looked up again. And when I did—
He smiled.
Not soft. Not cruel. Just the quiet satisfaction of someone watching something he owned stop fighting its leash.
“You’re not mine,” I whispered. The words broke apart on my tongue. But I said them anyway.
He leaned forward. Not fast. Just enough to steal the space between us. Enough to make sure I couldn’t pretend I didn’t hear him. Couldn’t pretend this wasn’t what I wanted—what I feared.