Chapter 29
Pain is immediate and blinding. Every nerve in my body lights up, electricity tearing through muscle and bone like it’s trying to rip me apart from the inside.
I go down, hard. My hands curl against the ground, fingers digging into dirt and grass that doesn’t feel real, doesn’t feel like anything except something to hold onto while everything else shatters.
I don’t remember the last time something hurt like this. Not bullets, not knives. Not anything. This is different because this is inside me.
Blood rushes into my ears as the current fades in uneven pulses, leaving behind something raw and tingling.
There’s a voice, distant and distorted. I can’t make out the words. I force my eyes open, but the world lags behind, slow to catch up. The trees swim. The ground tilts. My shadows stutter around me, weaker and unfocused.
Another word spoken, just one. I hear it this time.
“Please.”
Cason’s voice, soft and distressed, is enough to give me the strength I need to push against the ground. My muscles protest, and I drag in a breath that feels like it scrapes my throat on the way down.
I lift my head and see him. He’s standing a few feet away, trembling, staring at his hands like they’ve betrayed him, like there’s something on them that shouldn’t be.
But I don’t understand because there’s nothing there.
However, something is wrong, and even though every cell in my body is fucking screaming at me, I’m going to get to him.
Forcing myself to my feet, I take a slow, cautious step toward him. Not just because it hurts, but because I don’t want to provoke him, not again. The last thing I need is another hit of that.
As I take another step and then another, my shadows stay back, coiled and restless, as though they’re just as worried about him as I am.
“Cason?”
There’s no response. He doesn’t even look at me.
I take one last step until I’m two feet in front of him, watching every shift in his body, every flicker of that unstable energy under his skin.
“Cason.”
Still nothing.
He’s breathing too fast, his hands still shaking.
I’m close enough to touch him, but I don’t.
It’s not out of fear. Sure, he might be unstable, and I don’t know what that electricity will do if I decide to reach out.
But that’s not what holds me back. It’s the way he looks like he’s not here, like he’s somewhere else entirely.
I don’t want to frighten him more than he already is.
“Cason,” I say again, lower this time. “Look at me.”
His gaze doesn’t lift. It stays locked on his hands. But he finally speaks, his voice small and trembling.
“Blood. They’re covered in blood. Get it off. Please.”
There’s no blood. I can see that, but he can’t. I’m not sure where the blood is coming from in his mind, but the only assumption I can make is that it was once mine.
That almost makes me feel like I’m dying all over again.
Not for me, but for him.
Fuck. I am so done trying to deny the pull this man has on me.
I hesitate for only a second before I move, grabbing his hands and holding them in mine. There’s no shock, no current, just the warmth of his skin in my palms.
“There’s no blood,” I tell him, firm and steady. “Cason, look at me. There’s nothing there.”
His fingers twitch in mine, like he’s trying to shake something off that doesn’t exist. I tighten my grip slightly. Slowly, his gaze lifts, and when it meets mine, there are tears already falling from his eyes. That hits harder than the electricity did.
I have no idea how we went from him trying to kill me to me standing here holding his hands to comfort him so quickly, but it feels very…us.
“I’m sorry.” His voice breaks. “I wanted to hurt you.”
I hold his gaze because I don’t care. I’d let him hurt me as much as he needs to.
“I don’t blame you for that. I hurt you first.”
“It’s not that. It’s…” He shakes his head, a sob ripping out of him before he can stop it. “Seven years, Reese. Seven fucking years.”
Those words, the way they come out broken while tears slide down his cheeks, all of it lands heavy. Because I knew. I knew there was something there, but I thought it was a crush or Stockholm syndrome or something only physical. I didn’t know it went this deep, not for him.
I swallow hard and say, “I couldn’t come to you. I was trying to keep you safe.”
It’s the truth, but the bigger truth is…
“I should’ve tried harder to keep you safe from me.”
Again, he shakes his head. “I don’t care about that. It didn’t hurt any worse than watching you die.”
Air comes rushing out of my lungs without my permission, like it was punched out of me.
Fuck.
How did I not know?
His gaze remains locked on mine, even as his expression twists with something else he wants to say. I don’t have to ask him to share it because he blurts it out.
“I didn’t do it for the Institute.”
My brows draw together. “What?”
“What I did,” he says, voice a little steadier now but still fragile. “I didn’t do it for the Institute or for Malcolm. I…” Another sob, this one not quite as violent as the last. “I did it for you.”
I did it for you.
That does it. That right there nearly kills me all over again.
Those words drop like a stone somewhere deep, something in me shifting under the weight of it and refusing to settle back the way it should. My grip tightens around his hands without me meaning to.
“I thought I was going after the person who hired you,” he continues, the words coming faster now, as though they’ve been waiting too long to get out.
“Because that’s who I blamed for your death.
You and I aren’t so different when it comes to that because I needed someone to blame for something too.
I spent four years with vengeance the only thing on my mind.
It was all I focused on, all I cared about.
I didn’t care about anything else but making them pay. ”
My heart is going a million beats per minute because…fuck, I didn’t fucking know.
I was already feeling the guilt of hurting him for what he unknowingly did. But now? Now that I know he did it for me? I think maybe my heart is trying to beat out of my chest because I betrayed it by betraying him.
He didn’t move on, not like I fooled myself into believing that I had. He burned down everything around us trying to get back to something that was already gone. To me.
He lets out a broken, wet laugh and sniffs. “And when it was over…I had nothing left. It was just empty. Three years of it. Just…existing.”
My gaze drags over his face, taking in the cracks I didn’t put there, but may as well have. The exhaustion. The hollow parts that used to be fuller, brighter. He survived it, but it took something from him.
It took something from us both.
Because the worst part is that I understand exactly what that kind of empty feels like. I’ve been living in it, breathing it in, functioning through it. War, orders, blood, noise. Anything to fill the space where he used to be. And he did the same thing, just in a different direction.
This is what happens when you leave something unfinished. It doesn’t disappear. It rots. And he’s been living in that rot all this time because of me, because I died and let myself become something that couldn’t go back to him.
My thumb brushes against his wrist, a small, unconscious movement. Grounding, or maybe checking that he’s still here, still real.
Not another thing I lost.
Right here, right now, I make the most important decision of my life.
I will die forever before losing him again.
Holding his gaze with mine, I speak slowly. “You once asked me to run away with you.”
His breath hitches, and his eyes flicker. “I remember. I’ve thought about it every fucking day.”
I let go of one of his hands to place mine on the side of his neck with my thumb against his cheek. I stare so deep into his eyes that I feel as if I’m swimming in the green of them.
“I would follow you to the ends of the earth.”