Chapter 28
The drive is quiet. No music, no distractions. Just me, the road, and the coordinates burned into my brain like a countdown that gets louder the closer I get.
The city bleeds into empty roads, then into something rougher and narrower. Trees start to crowd in on either side, shadows stretching long across the asphalt like they’re already reaching for me.
That’s fitting.
“This is probably a bad idea,” I mutter under my breath, my hands tight on the steering wheel.
Felix isn’t here to judge me, but he made sure to tell me how much of a fucking idiot I am before I left.
I take a turn, and recognition hits as I remember being picked up here the other day.
I was out of it and don’t remember much, but I’m pretty sure someone or something was affecting me, causing me to get all turned around.
I do remember some things—vision blurry, lungs burning, sweat dripping down my face.
Running without knowing where I was going, just knowing I had to get away.
And here I am, willingly walking right back to the same man who’s taken me twice.
I find a place to pull the car off into the grass and cut the engine. For a moment, I just sit here, staring out through the windshield at the tree line, hoping that I’m ready for this. Ready to face him again.
I’m probably not, but carpe fucking diem.
“Round three.”
Then I get out.
Dusk purples the sky, and as I move into the trees, the canopy shrouds what little daylight remains. Every step crunches too loud under my shoes, dry leaves and twigs snapping, announcing my presence. Not that it matters. I’m sure he already knows I’m here.
I don’t try to follow the exact path I took before. There’s no way I could. I was barely conscious. I felt barely alive, running on instinct and adrenaline and pain, both the physical kind and the kind that hurt deeper.
But now I have coordinates.
And something else.
The faint hum under my skin sharpens and tingles as I move deeper through the trees, like it knows I’m getting closer.
I reach the spot of the coordinates and stop, peering around into the still, quiet woods. There’s nothing, no movement, no sound beyond the wind threading through the trees.
“You’re fucking kidding me.” I turn in a circle. “I drove all the way out here, and you can’t even be waiting for me?”
The electricity under my skin crackles.
“Reese?” I call out, louder this time. “I actually come to you this time, and you don’t even have the fucking decency to—”
Something moves.
It’s not in front of me. It’s below me. Shadows swim around my feet like liquid dark, sliding over the ground. They twist, coil, surge upward before I can react.
“Shit!”
They wrap around me, fast. Too fucking fast. They’re around my arms, my torso, pinning me in place even as I struggle against them. They’re not crushing me, but they’re holding me so I can’t move, can’t break free.
Then they’re around my throat.
My breath cuts off instantly as they wrap around tightly. Not enough to kill me, just enough to remind me exactly how easy it would be if they wanted to.
“Miss me?” I choke out because apparently I’m incapable of shutting the fuck up even while being strangled.
A figure steps out from behind a tree a few yards in front of me, as though he’s been there this entire time. Something stupid and traitorous inside my chest swells at the sight of him, adding too much pressure from the inside while I’m being crushed from the out.
I forgot how much darker he looks.
“I want to know who did it.”
No greeting, no hesitation. Just those seven words in a voice that sounds more dangerous than it ever has before.
The shadows ease, barely, but enough that I can breathe again. I suck in air, coughing once before I force myself upright against the hold they still have on me.
“Not even a hello? I died, Reese. You could at least pretend to care.”
His gaze doesn’t soften. If anything, it gets colder.
“Who?” he repeats.
I grin because I’m an idiot. “Pass.”
The shadows around my throat briefly tighten again. A warning. The lightheadedness lingers even after they let up.
“Cason,” he growls.
Suddenly, surviving seven years without hearing him say my name feels like a miracle, like I deserve a gold medal or some shit. Because I forgot just how strongly my name on his lips affects me.
Fuck. No. I’m supposed to be fucking fighting him.
“What’s the matter, Reese? Pissed you didn’t get to do it yourself? Shouldn’t have let me go, huh?”
His jaw ticks.
Good. Be mad.
“Besides,” I add. “I’m pretty sure I can handle myself now.”
My fingers twitch from where they’re pinned to my sides, and electricity sparks. The current surges through me, up my arms, and into the shadows wrapped around me. And…
Nothing.
The light sparks and flickers within the darkness, but it’s like they don’t even flinch.
“Fuck.”
Reese tilts his head, and I swear there’s a flash of amusement in his eyes. “You can’t electrocute shadows, Cason.”
“Noted.”
So, instead, I redirect, and the current snaps outward like a live wire.
Not into the shadows, but into the space between us.
Right to him. Reese’s body jerks, the shadows around me stuttering as the jolt lands.
They don’t disappear, but they lose some of their hold on reality, turning into something like mist and allowing me to break free, passing right through them.
I drop to the ground and roll forward as the shadows lash back at me. Scrambling to my feet, I jump backward just as one attempts to snatch me by the ankle like a vine.
The electricity hums louder now, stronger, like it’s feeding off the adrenaline.
Reese recovers fast. His shadows surge again, larger this time, more aggressive. I dodge one, barely, feeling it brush past my arm like ice. With each move of my body, I approach closer in his direction. Before the next strike, I send another pulse of electricity toward him.
He blocks it with shadows.
No. Not blocks.
He diffuses it.
The current disperses, light crackling as the sparks crawl uselessly across the darkness before fading.
“Well, that’s not fucking fair!”
A breeze blows through the trees, rippling through the grass and bringing the shadows closer with it. They gather, readying to strike, but I don’t give them the chance. I move first, closing the distance.
If I can’t hit the shadows…
Then I’ll hit him.
My hand darts out, and I grab onto his wrist. There’s contact, connection.
Power surges through my veins and across my skin, barely contained.
The jolt tears through him, stronger than before, enough to make his entire body seize.
He grunts, his nostrils flared, his eyes narrowing dangerously on me. But I can see the pain in them.
It’s really fucking satisfying.
I push harder.
Leaning forward until my face is inches from his, I glare right back. “You fucking feel that, don’t you?”
That’s what I felt for seven fucking years.
I almost say it.
There’s another surge, and he makes another pained sound, his face screwing up in a grimace. The shadows collapse back, recoiling like they’re tied to him.
Then his knees hit the ground.
And…
Everything stops.
Not the wind or the swaying of the trees or the faint crackle still buzzing under my skin. Just…everything that matters.
Because I’ve seen this before.
I let go of him and stumble back several steps. My breath catches. The woods vanish, and it’s only concrete, cold and dark. The basement. Reese on his knees.
No, no, no, no.
The sound of a gunshot echoes in my skull, loud enough to make me flinch even though it’s not real. Except…it is. It’s all right in front of me. My vision fractures, the past and the present bleeding into each other until I can’t tell which one I’m standing in.
Reese falling. Dropping to the ground. Bleeding. My hands covered it.
I look down. There’s nothing on my hands, but…
I can see it. I can feel it, sticky and warm.
My chest tightens, my breath coming fast and shallow.
I look up, and Reese is still there on his knees on the hard ground.
The black button-up is gone, replaced by a gray cotton T-shirt. Blood spreads across the front.
My brain doesn’t care that what I’m seeing isn’t real, that he’s not actually dying.
It’s the same.
“Get up,” I blurt, my voice cracking.
But he doesn’t move. His head is slightly bowed, both hands on the ground, breath uneven.
“Reese.” My voice is quieter now, the name breaking on the edge of something I don’t want to feel, don’t want to remember. “Get up.”
My hands hover uselessly in front of me because I don’t know what to do with them.
I drag in a breath that doesn’t feel like it goes anywhere.
My pulse is too loud in my ears, my heartbeat echoing through my skull until it feels like the only sound left in the world.
The woods tilt around me, the edges of my vision going dark in a way that has nothing to do with shadows this time.
I swallow hard, trying to get a grip, trying to anchor myself somewhere that isn’t seven years ago.
But my hands still feel like they’re covered in blood.
And Reese is still on his knees. And I can’t stop shaking.
And I can’t breathe right. And there’s still blood everywhere.
And what if these new powers are stronger than I thought?
And what if I fucking killed him? And what if I lose him all over again?
“Please.”
This time, it’s a desperate whisper.
It’s then that I realize I never learned how to exist in a world where Reese Morgan isn’t breathing.