Chapter 16
Tobias
“I don’t want to die.”
For a moment, everything in me went perfectly still.
The wind. The ocean. The cold bite of stone beneath my knees. Cove’s fists tangled in my shirt, and the tremor running through his body as though terror had become something alive beneath his skin.
All of it narrowed around those words.
“I don’t want to die.”
He thought I might kill him.
The searing pain in my chest rendered me speechless for a moment.
“You are not going to die,” I said finally, the words scraping out of me gravelly. “Not by my hand. Not by anyone’s.”
He sobbed harder at that, shaking his head against my chest as if refusal could protect him from the promise.
“Please,” he choked. “Please, Tobias, please just let me go.”
I closed my eyes.
He was still asking for the impossible.
“I can’t.”
He made a sound then—small, wounded, breaking—and drove both palms hard against my chest.
The force did not move me far, but it made space. Enough for him to twist, enough for one elbow to catch beneath my ribs and for one knee to drive clumsily against my thigh as he tried to wrench himself free. He was not strong enough to overpower me, not truly, but he was not weak either.
“Let go of me!” he cried.
“Cove.”
“No!”
He shoved again, harder this time, and managed to tear one arm partially free.
His nails raked across my wrist as he tried to pry my hand from his waist, and the sting of it barely registered except as proof that he was still moving, still alive, still close enough to hurt me because I had not lost him over the edge.
I tightened my grip before he could slip away.
He thrashed violently at that.
I shifted my weight, bracing one knee behind him, trying to hold him without crushing him, restrain him without bruising him, protect him from himself, while every movement convinced him further that he needed protection from me.
“Stop fighting,” I said, and hated myself the moment the words left my mouth because they sounded like a command when I meant them as a plea. “You will hurt yourself.”
“You’re hurting me!”
I released pressure at once, just enough to make sure my arm was not locked too tightly around his ribs.
He used the slack to twist again, nearly breaking free.
I caught him by the waist and hauled him back, and he screamed—not in pain, I did not think, but in terror so raw it tore through the night and made something savage in me rise to silence the world that had taught him to fear me.
Except I was the world just then.
I was the thing holding him.
I was the reason he was screaming.
“Tobias!”
Ben’s voice carried from behind me, strained by exertion and wind.
Cove jerked in my hold at the sound, perhaps because he thought it meant help, perhaps because he understood it meant the opposite. I turned my head to see Ben crossing the terrace toward us, rope looped over one forearm, his expression pale and set.
Cove saw the rope and went rigid before fighting even harder than before.
“No,” he gasped. “No, no, no, don’t—Ben, please, don’t.”
Ben flinched.
It was quick, but I saw it.
For all his loyalty, for all his steadiness, he had grown fond of Cove too. It was there in the way his jaw tightened, in the brief flicker of pain that crossed his face when Cove looked at him like betrayal had arrived wearing a familiar smile.
“I’m sorry,” Ben said, and for once, there was no charm in him at all. “I really am.”
“Don’t touch me,” Cove sobbed.
Ben looked at me.
I do not want this.
That was the first thought, useless and childish as it was. I did not want rope on Cove’s wrists. I did not want him restrained on the ground, shaking and wet-eyed and broken open by fear. I did not want Ben’s hands on him, did not want the practical necessity of knots and leverage and control.
But wanting had become irrelevant.
“His wrists first,” I forced out, my voice sounding like someone else’s.
Cove bucked against me as Ben approached. He got one arm free, swung blindly, and caught Ben hard across the cheek with the side of his fist. Ben cursed, more in surprise than pain, then caught Cove’s wrist before he could strike again.
“Careful,” I snapped.
“I am being careful,” Ben bit back, breathless. “He’s fighting like a feral cat.”
“Don’t call him that.”
“Then hold him still.”
Cove flailed at the sound of our voices, trying to get his wrist free from Ben’s grip. I shifted behind him, pinning him harder against my chest with one arm while catching his other wrist before he could claw at my face or Ben’s.
He cried out again.
Not loudly this time.
Worse.
A small, devastated sound that seemed to fold inward around itself.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured near his ear before I could stop myself. “I’m sorry, Cove. I’m sorry.”
“Then stop,” he begged.
I could not.
Ben worked quickly, his movements efficient despite the blood rising on his cheek where Cove had caught him.
The rope slid around Cove’s wrists, soft enough not to cut too harshly into his skin, but strong enough to hold when Ben cinched it with the grim competence of a man who had done many things he preferred not to discuss.
Cove’s breath hitched as his wrists were drawn together.
“Please,” he whispered pitifully, and the word went through me like a hook.
I had no answer worthy of it.
When Ben finished the knot, Cove tried one last time to wrench away, but with his wrists bound, the movement only pitched him sideways. I caught him before he could strike the ground.
“Ankles too,” Ben said.
“No,” I said.
Ben stared at me through the dark. “Tobias.”
“He can’t run like this.”
“He just ran toward a cliff in the dark,” Ben grunted. “He is terrified, and he is going to keep trying because he thinks we’re going to kill him. We are not carrying him when he can kick the whole way.”
Cove had gone very still against me.
I looked down at him, at the wet tracks on his reddened face, the tremble in his mouth, the bound wrists pressed helplessly between us.
“I don’t want—” I began.
“I know what you want,” Ben interrupted, quieter now. “And I know what has to happen.”
I hated him for being right.
“Do it gently,” I murmured.
“Of course.”
Between us, we lowered Cove onto the stone, not flat on his back, not with any force, but enough that Ben could reach his ankles while I kept a hand beneath Cove’s head so it did not strike the ground.
Cove fought again the second Ben touched him, not with the same strength as before, but with panicked jerks and desperate, useless kicks that made the process take longer and hurt all of us more than it needed to.
“Stop,” I said softly. “Cove, stop. He won’t hurt you.”
“You’re tying me up,” he cried, voice breaking around the words. “You can’t say that while you’re tying me up.”
I had no answer.
None that would not sound monstrous.
Ben secured the second knot and sat back on his heels, breathing hard.
For several seconds, the three of us remained there in the wind, Cove on the stone between us with his wrists and ankles bound, Ben sweaty and surly beside him, and me kneeling with one hand still curved around the back of Cove’s head as though gentleness in one place could excuse restraint everywhere else.
It did not, but I kept my hand there anyway.
“We need to get him inside,” Ben said.
“Okay.”
Cove began shaking his head before I moved. “No. No, please. Please, I’ll stay outside. I won’t run. I won’t—”
“You nearly fell,” I said.
“Because you chased me.”
“But you still nearly fell.”
Ben stood first, rubbing one hand over his face before glancing back toward the house. “Quickly. Before anyone sees something from the road.”
“No one can see from the road.”
“Then, before he freezes or vomits or manages to hurt himself worse. Shit, Tobias. Come on.”
That was a better argument.
Together, we lifted him.
Cove struggled the moment his feet left the ground, his bound ankles jerking, his shoulders twisting as if he could somehow wriggle free from the two of us through will alone. Ben took his legs. I held his upper body because I would never allow anyone else to do it.
It was undignified and terrible.
Cove kept pleading. Not continuously, which might have been easier to endure, but in broken intervals that arrived between sobs and frantic breaths.
“Please don’t.”
“Tobias, please.”
“I won’t tell anyone.”
“I swear I won’t.”
By the time we reached the front door, my clothes were wet with the combination of the tank water, the ocean mist, and Cove’s tears. The house opened to us with warm light and controlled air, so violently civilized after the cliffside that the scene became unbearable in its absurdity.
Ben kicked the door shut behind us, causing Cove to flinch.
“Where are we putting him?” Ben asked.
“His bedroom,” I said at once.
Ben’s gaze saddened. “Tobias…”
“He will be comfortable there.”
“The door locks from the inside.”
“I can override it.”
“Not without damaging the frame, and you know that. It was designed as a guest suite, not containment.”
The word containment made Cove go rigid.
Ben realized his mistake a fraction too late.
I looked down at Cove, but his eyes had squeezed shut, his face turned away from me as though sight itself had become too much.
The house seemed to narrow around us, every hallway suddenly a decision.
The guest room he’d stayed in that stormy night was prepared.
His room, in every way that mattered, though he didn’t understand that yet.
There was soft bedding, a full bath, clothing that fit, and windows facing the water.
It was a space where he might calm, eventually, if he could be made to understand that none of this was meant as punishment.
But Ben was right.
The door locked from the inside.
The windows were reinforced but not sealed against someone determined and terrified. There were objects in that room he could break, use, throw, or shatter. There was a bathroom, a mirror, fixtures, too many variables. Too many ways for panic to turn the space against him.
Against himself.