Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
DAMIAN
Ishove out of the bedroom, my shirt half over my head, arms tangled in cotton and panic. My boots are in my hands.
Bridger’s pacing the living room like a caged animal, his jaw locked, eyes wide with something I don’t see often—fear.
It sinks into my gut and whispers that this might be it.
And fuck, I feel it. Because we both know Cody.
He’s young. Stupid. Reckless as hell when his pride gets bigger than his common sense—and right now, his chest is probably full of that old Cross rage, the kind that makes you feel invincible right up until the second you’re dead.
He’s going to get himself killed.
“What happened?” I snap, chest heaving, still tugging the hem of my shirt down as I cross the room. “What did he say?”
Bridger turns sharply, stops pacing, and holds up a folded piece of paper with fingers that shake more than I’ve ever seen from him. His cheeks are flushed bright red, jaw clenched like he’s holding something back that’s trying to rip its way out.
“You guys were in there…” he mutters, voice rough, “fucking.” He stops.
I blink, confused, and then his gaze flicks toward the hallway.
“And me and Neve were…” He trails off again, choking on the words. His expression shifts, and something flickers across his face—something I can’t quite read. Regret? Guilt? Shame? He clears his throat hard and looks down. “We were in my room. Talking. And when I came out… this was on the table.”
I snatch the note from his hand just as I hear footsteps behind me.
Marlowe.
She’s fully dressed, moving fast, eyes wide and sharp, that determined fire already burning behind them like she’s about to charge straight into the center of this mess with us.
But she can’t.
Not with Clay.
Not with Cody alone and reckless and dragging his Cross blood straight into the fire.
I feel her behind me—close enough to feel her breath on my back—but I don’t turn around.
I can’t look at her right now. Not when I know she’s going to beg to come.
She has to stay here. She has to get on that fucking plane.
She has to live. I force myself to ignore those piercing blue eyes burning a hole through me and look down at the note in my hand.
Cody’s handwriting. Sharp. Rushed. And every word feels like a fuse that’s already been lit.
I’ll take care of Clay.
– C
That’s it. That’s all he wrote. My hand closes into a fist, crushing the note without thinking. The paper crunches between my fingers as something violent coils in my chest. Fuck. “How did he even know where to go?” I growl.
“We Googled it,” Bridger says, stepping forward. “When Marlowe said it before. It’s one of those—what do you call them? Urban explorer places. A known spot. Local legend bullshit. You look up 'abandoned school near Somers Point Road' and it’s the first thing that pops up.”
My jaw locks. “When did he leave?”
“I don’t know,” Bridger snaps, raking a hand through his hair.
“Well, maybe we can still catch him. Maybe he’s right outside.”
“I fucking checked already. He’s not outside. He took my fucking keys and my Jeep and fucking left. We have to go now.”
The look he gives me guts me clean. It’s that same look from when we were kids—when Clay would drag Cody into the closet after beating him bloody, slam the door shut, and leave him locked in the dark for hours.
We'd come home from school and sneak in with a towel to clean the piss and shit off Cody’s legs while he cried, shook, and told us he was fine.
He was fucking five. Then we’d get beat for helping him. I nod once, jaw tight.
Then I turn to Marlowe. “Where is it?” I ask, and I already hate the way her face falls. I already feel the words she’s not saying.
I grab my phone, wake it up, and pull open the maps app. Her voice is soft but sure. “Scullville School. Egg Harbor Township. It’s off Somers Point Road.”
I start typing, throat burning, fingers flying across the screen. And when the pin drops onto that decaying little patch of forgotten hell, I feel the cold, sharp edge of inevitability settle in my bones.
Marlowe grabs my arm, her grip strong, eyes fierce and pleading. “Let’s call the police,” she says. “Right now. Tell them what’s happening—have them go there. They can stop this.”
“No,” I grind out, voice low, sharp. “We can’t.”
Her eyebrows pull together, confused and furious. “Why the hell not?”
“Because Cody’s got warrants out on him,” I snap. “And cops aren’t going to let us kill Clay—and that’s the only thing that’s going to stop all of this. We don’t want him arrested. We don’t want him to get taken in. We want him in the ground.”
Her face twists. Not disagreement. Not even fear.
Just heartbreak. And I can’t take it. I look straight into those eyes—those damn blue eyes that undo me every time—and everything in me cracks.
I don’t want to leave her. I don’t want to go.
But I have to. “Remember what you promised me in there,” I say, my voice rough and thick.
“You get on that plane, no matter what.”
She shakes her head slowly. “I didn’t promise you that, Damian.”
And my stomach drops. No—sinks like I’ve been gutted.
Not in some weak, trembling way. Not in a panic.
In that deep, hard, final way you feel when you already know how this ends.
I cup the back of her head, fingers curling into her hair, and pull her close.
Then I press my lips to her forehead, hold them there longer than I should, and breathe her in like it’s the last time.
“Just get on that plane, Angel,” I whisper.
I let her go.
I fucking hate it, but I let her go.
Then I nod toward Bridger. “Let’s go.”
We fly down the stairs two at a time, boots slamming against wood, hearts hammering louder than our footsteps. The late morning sun is too bright, too cheerful, like it doesn’t know the world’s about to split wide open.
We climb into my SUV, slam the doors, and I start the engine with a roar. The tires squeal against the pavement as I tear out of the parking lot, gripping the wheel like it’s the only thing keeping me from falling apart.
My phone sits in the console, barking directions. Turn right at the next light. I cut across two lanes and turn hard, tires screeching again. My jaw is locked so tight it aches.
“I don’t have my gun,” I say, voice low, bitter. “It was in the safe. In the fucking fire.”
Bridger doesn’t even flinch. Just stares out the windshield like he’s already playing out all the ways this can go wrong.
“Well, isn’t that our Cross luck,” he mutters. “Because neither do I. Cody took mine. Along with my goddamn Jeep.”
My gut twists.
So we’re going in blind. I shake my head once, tight and sharp. “So we’re going in unarmed.”
Bridger lets out a long breath—deep and bracing. “This is going to get up close and personal.”
Neither of us says it out loud, but we both know what this means. We’ve walked into hell before.
“Call Reese,” I say, eyes locked on the road. “Tell him to meet us there. I think where he’s staying is closer than we are. GPS says we’ll be there in twenty.”
Bridger’s already digging out his phone before I finish. “What do I tell him?”
“Tell him to bring whatever he’s got,” I mutter. “God only knows if Clay’s even alone.”
He starts the call, pressing the phone to his ear as the line rings.
And all I can think about is Lo. Her soft skin under my hands.
Her thighs around my waist. Her breathy moans in my ear as she trembled under me—around me.
The way she broke apart when I pushed her just right, how she cried when she came, like it was too much and not enough all at once.
If anything happens to me today, those are going to be my last fucking thoughts.
Not the beatings. Not the scars. Not the blood.
Her.
And still—my hands tighten on the wheel, white-knuckled and pulsing—going up against Clay?
That shit’s never been easy. Not for me. Not for my brothers. He didn’t just hurt us. He broke us. He always found a way to win. To twist the knife and call it a gift. Every tattoo I’ve got covers a scar. A memory. A lesson taught with fists and fury.
I tried to live his way. Tried to wear the same rot like it was armor. Tried to believe that being feared was the same as being strong. But Clay? Clay knew how to hurt you in a way that made you apologize for bleeding.
Bridger ends the call with a sharp exhale. “Reese is on his way. Says he’s about ten minutes from the school. He knows where it is. Said he’s passed it a bunch of times since he’s been here.”
I nod once, eyes on the road, mind already there—on Cody, on Clay, on how this is all going to go to hell fast.
Bridger shifts beside me, angles in my direction, and I catch it out of the corner of my eye, the way his fingers twitch, how his knee bounces like he’s holding something in that’s about to rip free.
“Fuck, Damian,” he says, voice breaking.
“I’m freaking the fuck out. I haven’t seen him in seventeen years.
I was thirteen when he went away, and he would… ” He trails off.
“He’d gut you wide open,” I say after a beat, my voice low and rough, “and then scream at you for bleeding on his floors.”
Bridger lets out a jagged breath, nods once, and stares out the windshield like maybe he can see the past clawing through the glass. “We never talked about him,” he says. “What he did.”
“I know.” I want to shut it down. I want silence. I want to think about Lo. Not the fists. Not the closets. Not the sound of Cody’s bones cracking or my mother’s silence echoing like consent.
“I went to therapy, Damian.” His voice is soft now. Broken around the edges. “I never told you or Cody, but… after he went in, I went. I did it for years.”
I nod, throat thick. “I knew.”
“What?”
I glance at him, then back at the road. “You think I didn’t know when you started quoting self-regulation bullshit every time I went off the rails? You’ve been counseling me for years, Bridger. Fuck you—but thank you.”
A small laugh slips out of him. It’s shaky. Worn down. But it’s there.
“I’m proud of you,” I add. “Of both of you. You and Cody. You lived through some dark shit. Clay didn’t leave any of us clean.”
Bridger goes quiet. Then, after a beat, he says the one thing I knew was coming. “But you lived through more, Damian. You were the closest to him. You were there the longest. You were old enough to remember all of it. And you stayed alive longer.”
My jaw tightens. My chest aches. I take my eyes off the road for half a second.
Look at him. “I’m good,” I say. And it’s not a lie.
Not this time. “I have Lo. She’s what keeps me whole.
I found peace in her. She’s the only thing that makes this life feel like it’s worth surviving.
” I swallow down the knot in my chest. “That’s why he has to die.
I won’t let him cast a shadow over the only light I’ve ever had. ”
Bridger shifts beside me and huffs out something that’s half a breath, half a laugh. “We’re getting on that plane today,” he says. Not hopeful—certain. Darkly upbeat, like he’s choosing to believe it because there’s no other fucking option.
“Yeah, we are,” I say, teeth clenched in a grin that doesn’t quite reach the surface. “We’re gonna do this fast. In and out. Because I need to get back inside Lo.”
Bridger makes a face. Like he just bit into something sour and didn’t want to admit he liked the taste. “You guys have a lot of sex,” he mutters, wrinkling his nose like he’s trying not to smile.
“Yeah,” I say, unapologetic. “We do.”
He snorts and looks out the window. “Jesus. I go through women like expired milk. I think I make them nervous.”
“You do,” I deadpan.
He laughs once, then his smile fades, replaced by something tighter—shakier. “Fuck,” he mutters, rubbing his palms against his jeans. “We’re going to see Clay. My hands are sweating. That ever happen before? Not with Joel. Not with Zero. Not with any of the other psychos we’ve dealt with.”
“Yeah,” I say, my voice dropping. “I know.” This one’s blood-deep. “But fuck,” I add, gripping the wheel harder, “it’s going to be worth it—seeing a bullet hole between that bastard’s eyes.”
Bridger lets out a low whistle. “Goddamn right.”
I glance down at the GPS on my phone.
Three minutes out.
My stomach knots tighter, coiling like a live wire under my ribs. I scan the road ahead, a long stretch of cracked highway, broken fences, and overgrown fields swallowing whatever used to be here.
“It should be around here somewhere,” I mutter, slowing just a little.
Bridger leans forward, squinting through the windshield. “There,” he says, pointing. “That’s got to be it.”
And yeah—about a football field away, rising out of the weeds like a corpse clawing its way up through the earth, is the rusted metal roof of a long-abandoned building.
The old Scullville school. Half the windows are busted out.
The bricks are stained black. The front doors are barely hanging on their hinges.
“Looks straight out of a horror movie,” Bridger mutters.
I let out a dry, dark laugh. “Just like us.”
We turn off the road, the SUV crunching over an overgrown gravel path that used to be a driveway. Grass scrapes the sides of the car, tall enough to block the lower half of the building.
“That’s Reese’s car,” I say, pointing. It’s parked crooked, the driver’s side door flung open like he bailed out fast—or was ripped out.
And Reese? He’s on the ground beside it.
I slam the gearshift into park before the SUV even stops rolling. The second it jerks still, we’re out. Boots slamming the ground, grass whipping at our legs as we tear toward Reese’s car.
“Reese!” Bridger shouts, even though we both already know. You can feel it in the air—something still and final. Death.
I drop to my knees beside him. He’s crumpled just outside the open door, one arm bent beneath him, the other limp across the gravel.
There’s a hole in his head. Small and clean. Right between the eyes. The blood beneath him is still pooling.
I reach out, touch Reese’s throat. I know there will be no pulse, but I check anyway.
“Fuck me,” Bridger breathes, air sucked clean from his lungs. “Looks like Dad hasn’t changed a bit.”