Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
SADIE
R owan sat on the edge of the tub, his eyes fixed on the cracked tiles of the bathroom floor, deliberately avoiding mine.
The tang of antiseptic overpowered the metallic scent of blood as I dabbed at Rowan’s stitches.
He flinched under my hand, a muscle twitching near his ribs.
I held my breath, waiting for him to shove me away.
The small moment we’d had at the club was now long forgotten.
The drive home had been a tense, suffocating silence, the kind that amplified every second of the clock and every creak of the car’s cheap plastic. Rowan had maintained a stony expression as he’d sped through the deserted streets of our town, eventually pulling up in my driveway.
I couldn’t tell whether he was pissed at me, or the world. But with the way he wouldn’t look at me, it was hard to pretend I wasn’t the reason.
By the time I had managed to coax him into his bathroom to clean him up, he was as tightly wound up as that Jack-in-a-box from some horrible horror movie I’d watched the previous year.
I’d been hiding another black eye. Immersing myself in fictional horror was the only way I could cope with the real-life nightmare I was enduring.
I pressed a square of gauze against the wound on Rowan’s side, tearing a piece of tape from the roll with my teeth. Rowan winced, a sharp hiss escaping through his clenched teeth as his hands balled into fists on his thighs.
His stitches had pulled, but the opening wasn’t as severe as I had feared back at the club. Once the caked-on blood was wiped away, only a small opening was visible, one that would likely heal on its own.
I glanced up briefly. “Sorry,” I murmured softly, securing the last piece of tape to his warm skin. “That should do it.”
Finally, he met my gaze—or rather, pierced me with a glare—his honey-coloured eyes swirling with a heated blend of confusion and, if I wasn’t mistaken, fear.
He continued ignoring me as he stood, snatching his bloodstained T-shirt from where it lay crumpled beside the sink, dried stiff with brown smears. He tugged it over his head, the seconds dragging on, each one a match against my heartbeat, as he headed for the door.
I stood there like an idiot, unmoving. Was he seriously just going to walk out on me?
Instead of disappearing, Rowan paused, pressing his palms to either side of the doorframe as if contemplating whether to leave. There was something brittle in the way he held himself, like anger was just the shell holding everything else in.
Slowly, he turned his head just enough to give me his profile. “What are you sorry for, Sadie?”
Shit. He knew.
Scout, the little tattletale.
Not that it was entirely his fault. I was the one who had messed up, not Scout.
Besides, the situation could have been far worse.
Snake could have discovered that I had been snooping through his stuff, violating his privacy.
If he had found out, I seriously doubted I’d still be breathing.
He didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who asked questions first.
“Right.” My voice cracked on the word. “That,” I mumbled, my fingers twisting in front of me like they were trying to tie themselves into knots. “Listen, Ro, I was going to tell you, but I knew you’d be pissed about it.”
He slammed his palms against the wall, the sound cracking through the room like a gunshot. The mirror beside him trembled from the impact, catching fractured reflections of us both—broken pieces we couldn’t fit together.
I opened my mouth to say something, anything. But mainly to defend myself.
Then he spun around to face me, so fast I stumbled backwards my lower back hitting the vanity with a dull thud. “We’re way past pissed, Sadie,” he said, hands clenched at his sides.
The old halogen light above me flickered, the low hum taunting me in the silence. Could I even talk myself out of this one? I tried, nonetheless.
“Why are you so angry with me?” I murmured, crossing my arms over my chest—an attempt to shield myself from the sting of Rowan’s words. “I was careful. I thought I had it under control.” I knew he wasn’t upset about that, but it was all I had to work with in the moment.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Rowan threw his arms up, jaw tightening as though he was trying to bite off his own tongue. “Jesus Christ, Sadie. Do you even think things through before you do them? Or is it your only purpose to leave a trail of destruction behind you?”
I reached out, my hand trembling, stopping just short of touching him. I was afraid he might shatter if I did. Why didn’t he understand why I’d done it ?
“I was trying to help, Rowan. I thought that if I could find something concrete to keep Snake locked up, then I had to try. He told me he knows what happened to my mum. I just—I needed to find something tangible. I just wanted to help you .”
Rowan laughed, the hollow sound echoing in the room, matching the emptiness in my chest. It crawled over me like tiny spiders, and I shivered.
“Help?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You put yourself in danger. That’s not helping.”
My eyebrows shot up. “So, it’s okay for you to do it? But not me?”
“No, it’s not okay, Sadie. Do the lives of others even matter to you? Or is this purely the Sadie fucking Cooper show? Because from where I’m standing, nothing else matters to you. No-one else matters to you.”
The words hit harder than I wanted to admit. Maybe because a part of me believed them. But I couldn’t take it anymore. He didn’t get it. He never did.
“Fuck you, Rowan. I was trying to protect you. If you can’t see that then you’re as ignorant as ever.”
He narrowed his eyes, a shadow creeping over them. “What?”
I jabbed a finger in the air at him, my voice rising. “You said you’d do anything to keep me safe. Don’t you think I’d do the same for you? I’d die for you, Ro.”
His body stiffened. Just for a second. His mouth opened, then shut. He looked away, jaw clenched. Then he shook his head like he was trying to shake the words out of existence. “You don’t mean that.”
I didn’t flinch. “I mean every word. I would die for you the same way I’d have died for Logan.”
He moved around the tight bathroom like a caged thing, hands tugging at his hair. “Don’t say that. Don’t fucking say that.” His voice cracked, splintering the thin air between us, and for a moment he looked so raw I almost couldn’t bear it.
The edges of his words found every fracture inside me, the pain a dull ache.
How could he not see the lengths I’d go to for him? Hadn’t I risked everything for him already? What else did he need to believe me?
“You know why.” My words were barely above a whisper.
He shook his head harder, eyes darting around the room, anywhere but at me. “Don’t. Just . . . don’t.”
“Why not?”
He paused in front of the sink and leaned over, bracing himself like the porcelain might give way under his weight.
“Because every time I let my guard down, you do something like this. I can’t even trust you to keep yourself safe.
” His face betrayed him, giving me a glimpse of the panic beneath the anger, and the exhaustion layered under both.
“And tonight, you put Scout in danger. And for what? A fucking phone number.” He turned on me, the veins in his neck straining under his tattooed skin.
“If Snake finds out you were in his house, he’ll kill you.
Do you understand that? When you do reckless shit, how am I supposed to protect you? ”
“Me?” I scoffed. “Pretty sure you were the one who went and got yourself shot. How’s that for reckless?” My voice caught in my throat, choking me up.
Just the reminder of seeing him on that bed . . . I couldn’t do that again.
“And that could have been you today. Do you understand that?” He struck a fist against his chest, right over his ribs, like he wanted to crack himself open and show me the rot he kept buried underneath.
“You think I want to bury you, Firefly?” His voice broke then.
Just a crack, the first snap in a collapsing dam.
“I’d rather die a thousand excruciating deaths—a million— than endure this fucking existence without you.
And you know what? Maybe that’s what’s truly reckless—giving you my damn heart. ”
In that moment, everything else in the shitty little bathroom stilled, except for the drip of the leaking tap and the frantic thud of blood inside my head. I saw it then. Not just the fear, but the truth underneath it. He didn’t want to lose me. He already had too much to lose.
And he was trying so hard to hide from me. His terror was palpable. Though it wasn’t the kind of fear you felt in the face of a gun or a man like Snake. This was the kind that came from being seen—really seen—and not being sure you’d survive it.
My first instinct was to throw my arms around him, to tell him I’d never leave, that we were too broken to survive apart—even if we tried to pretend otherwise.
But he’d gone rigid, every muscle trembling with restraint.
Maybe the only thing keeping him from shattering into pieces was some mental duct tape and the stubbornness that had gotten all of us this far.
“Don’t say that,” I whispered, but it was pathetic, and we both knew it.
Because I’d always wanted him to say it. I’d wanted to hear him admit that all his anger, all his violence, all his rules, were just armour for how fucking much he cared.
He turned the tap on, his hands shaking as he cupped them under the stream of water and splashed his face.
After a long minute, he sighed, shaking his head. “I’m done, Sadie. I can’t keep doing this with you,” he mumbled, snatching up a towel and wiping himself clean. “Not anymore. Just go home.”