Chapter 45
Chapter
Forty-Five
FALLON
I pull into my driveway and kill the engine, but my hands don't move to unbuckle my seatbelt.
I don't reach for my purse sitting on the passenger seat.
Don't do anything except grip the steering wheel hard, like it's the only thing keeping me tethered to reality instead of letting me float away into the numbness that's become my constant companion.
The house looms ahead of me through the windshield—our house, though calling it mine has always felt like a lie. Daniel's house. I'm just the woman who lives here, another piece of property he owns. Just another cage with prettier bars than most.
This last week has been absolutely miserable, a special kind of torture I wasn't prepared for.
I've fallen into a mechanical routine: work at the school where I can pretend to be a functional human being for eight hours, then straight home to play nurse to the man who's spent years systematically destroying me.
Daniel's feeling better now, healing faster than I'd hoped.
The bruises are fading from deep purple to that sickly yellow-green that signals recovery, the swelling around his ribs going down, his split lip sealed over with new pink skin.
But he's still beat up enough that he can't hurt me the way he usually does.
Can't chase me through the house when I don't move fast enough.
Can't pin me against walls when I say the wrong thing.
Can't demonstrate with his fists exactly how much he hates when I do something wrong, when I breathe wrong, when I exist wrong.
It should feel like relief. A reprieve. A brief vacation from terror.
Instead, it just feels desperately, achingly sad.
Because at least fear is something concrete, something real.
Terror keeps you sharp, keeps you focused on the immediate necessity of survival, on reading his moods and adjusting your behavior and calculating the fastest route to a door that locks.
This hollow emptiness that's replaced it is so much worse—a void that swallows everything good and leaves only this gray existence behind.
I spend my days at school pretending everything is fine, maintaining the careful facade of the competent teacher with the perfect marriage.
I stand at the front of my classroom discussing Gothic literature and tragic heroines while being a tragic heroine myself, watching Kade in the front row and dying a little every time I can't touch him.
Can't talk to him beyond brief, professional exchanges about assignments and grades.
Can't do anything except exist in the same space and ache with wanting so intense it physically hurts, a constant throb beneath my ribs where my heart used to be whole.
Then I come home to this prison. To playing dutiful wife for a man I hate with every fiber of my being, while the boy I love—God, I love him—waits for me across the city in a world I can't reach.
I pull out my phone from my purse with trembling fingers, the screen bright in the gathering dusk.
My fingers move automatically to open messages, following a pattern I've repeated so many times it's become ritual.
Kade's number is memorized down to the last digit—I can't save it in my contacts, can't leave evidence that Daniel might find during one of his frequent phone inspections.
But my hands know the pattern anyway, muscle memory from all the stolen moments when I let myself reach out into the darkness and find warmth waiting.
Me: I miss you.
The words blur on the screen as my eyes fill.
God, I sound pathetic. Needy and desperate and weak.
Like some lovesick teenager instead of a twenty-eight-year-old woman with graduate degrees who should know better than to fall for her student, should have more control, should be stronger than this endless wanting.
I watch the message sit there, delivered but unread. One minute crawls by with agonizing slowness. Then another. I'm about to give up, to shove the phone away and force myself inside to whatever waits—
My phone vibrates against my palm.
Unknown: God you don't even know. Are you home yet?
My chest tightens at his words, breath catching as I imagine his voice saying them.
Deep and rough and full of the same desperate wanting that lives in my bones, that's rewritten my DNA into something that needs him to survive.
I can picture him exactly—probably in the garage, covered in grease from working on some bike, phone clutched in one oil-stained hand while he waits for my response like it's oxygen.
Me: Yeah, just pulled up but I don't want to go in yet.
The admission feels dangerous. Too honest. Too revealing of how much I hate this life, this house, this marriage that's slowly killing me from the inside out.
Three dots appear immediately, dancing across the screen. He's typing. Erasing. Typing again.
Unknown: Then don't, come over.
I stare at the message, heart hammering against my ribs so hard I'm sure it's going to crack through.
What would happen if I just did it? Put the car in reverse, drove across the city to Kade's house, let him wrap those strong arms around me and pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist?
Just for one night. Just for a few stolen hours where I could breathe without counting the cost, could touch him without fear—
My passenger door opens.
The sound is so sudden, so unexpected, that my entire body locks up. Before I can scream, before I can reach for the door locks I forgot to engage, before I can do anything except freeze like prey that's just spotted the predator, a large man slides into the seat beside me.
He fills the space completely, overwhelming my senses with his presence. The smell of expensive cologne and something darker underneath—gunpowder, maybe, or the copper tang of old blood.
"If you don't want Kade to die, then listen to me very carefully."
The accent is thick—Spanish, but different from Damián's polished, educated fluency that sounds like it came from private schools and international business meetings.
This is rougher around the edges. Dangerous in a way that makes my blood run cold, my survival instincts screaming at a frequency I haven't heard since the first time Daniel hit me.
I turn to look at him properly and my breath catches in my throat.
He's beautiful in the way poisonous things are beautiful—the kind of stunning that warns you to stay away even as it compels you closer.
Dark eyes that could be called soulful in another context, framed with thick lashes that would look gentle on anyone else.
But here in my car, with the dome light casting shadows across his face, they're just cold.
Demonic. Utterly without mercy or warmth.
His face is all sharp angles and bronze skin stretched over aristocratic bone structure, black hair smoothed back revealing features that would photograph beautifully if they weren't currently promising violence.
He's built like he could break me in half without trying—broad shoulders straining against an expensive suit that probably costs more than my salary, hands resting on his thighs that look like they know a hundred different ways to hurt and have employed every single one at some point.
Beautiful. Deadly. Absolutely terrifying.
My mind catalogs him automatically, his suit, the accent, the casual confidence of someone who's never questioned his right to invade someone's space and threaten their life.
"You need to break things off with him. Stay away from Kade.
" His voice drops lower, each word precise and measured, carefully enunciated like he's making sure I understand every syllable.
"Your husband and other men have enough evidence to put him and most of his MC in jail for the rest of their lives. Do you understand me?"
The words hit me like physical blows, each one landing with devastating accuracy.
I can't speak. Can't breathe. Can't do anything except process what he just said, my mind spinning frantically through the implications.
Daniel has evidence. Against Kade. Against the entire Wicked Gods MC.
Enough to destroy everything. Everyone.
My mind races, trying to make sense of it. What could Daniel possibly have? What did Kade do? What has the MC done that would give Daniel—the District Attorney, God, how did I forget that's what he is, what he does—enough ammunition to destroy them all?
And does Daniel know about Kade and me? Has he been watching, waiting, gathering evidence while I thought I was being so careful?
Strong fingers grip my face without warning, forcing me to meet those dark demonic eyes that promise nothing but pain.
His touch is firm but not painful—yet. Just insistent enough to make me understand how important this is, how serious the threat.
How easily he could hurt me if I don't give him what he wants.
"This is very serious, Mrs. Reid." The formal address sends chills down my spine. "Forget about him and the MC. Take care of your husband like a good wife should. Be a good girl, or your boyfriend will pay the price. Sí?"
He's waiting for an answer, staring at me with eyes that promise he'll make good on every threat if I don't give him what he wants. Promises that Kade will suffer, that the MC will burn, that everyone I've come to care about will pay for my selfishness.
"Sí," I whisper. The word comes out shaky, barely audible even in the enclosed space of the car.
He nods once. Sharp. Final. Satisfied that his message has been received and understood.
Then he's gone—just opens the door and slides out with fluid grace, walks away down my quiet suburban street like he was never there, like this was just a casual conversation between acquaintances.
Leaving me alone with my thoughts and the wreckage of whatever future I'd been foolish enough to imagine with Kade, with the MC.
My phone vibrates in my lap, making me jump.
Unknown: Peaches?
The nickname feels like a knife between my ribs. So sweet. So tender. So completely impossible now.
My hands shake violently as I open the message thread, vision blurring with tears I refuse to let fall. I stare at his messages. Evidence of my betrayal of Daniel. Evidence of my corruption of my student. Evidence that could destroy us both.
Block contact.
The prompt appears and I hit it before I can change my mind, before I can think too hard about what I'm losing.
Delete messages.
The conversation disappears, taking with it every "I miss you" and "come over" and "God I need you"—all the lifelines that kept me tethered to something other than despair.
I shove the phone back in my purse like it burned me, like I can't stand to touch the thing that just severed my last connection to feeling alive.
I sit in the car for long minutes, counting my breaths the way my therapist taught me before Daniel made me stop going to appointments.
One. Two. Three. Four. Trying to steady my racing heart, trying to slow the panic that threatens to overwhelm me entirely before I go inside.
Daniel can't know anything is wrong. Can't see fear or confusion or grief or the way my world just shattered around me like glass.
Can't have any ammunition to ask questions I can't answer without condemning Kade.
I'm good at pretending—this marriage has taught me that much, given me a master class in performing normalcy while dying inside.
I can do this. I can walk into that house and smile at the man who's destroyed me.
Can bring him dinner and medication and play the dutiful wife for however long this nightmare continues.
So I fix my face into careful neutrality, checking my expression in the rearview mirror until I see the mask settle into place—pleasant, empty, perfectly unremarkable.
I grab my purse and school bag from the back.
I climb out of the car on legs that threaten to give way but hold through sheer force of will.
And I walk toward the house like I'm not dying inside, like I haven't just chosen survival over love for the last time.