Chapter 43 Aurora
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Aurora
I can’t stand the way time moves here, like it’s determined to drive me insane. The dark in this place stretches everything out until a minute feels like a year, and then every so often the door opens, and my whole body sets on fire.
I remain on the floor with my back against the wall, my shoulder throbbing, my head still a little dizzy, and I still can’t get these zip ties all the way off.
My hands are numb. Still, the tie on my right wrist has shifted a little; I just need to keep working at it.
I twist my wrists, testing the angle again, and pain flashes hot and ugly up my arms. My fingers feel thick and clumsy, like they belong to someone else. Someone much less useful. But there’s the tiniest bit of give now, the faintest scrape of plastic against skin that wasn’t there before.
My pulse jumps.
Okay, that’s something.
I drag the edge of the tie against the rough seam in the concrete behind me, using the wall like a saw, like friction alone might decide to be romantic and save my life.
It hurts a lot, but I keep going. I shift again, forcing my hands into a new angle, and the zip tie bites deeper before it slips a fraction.
Just a fraction.
Barely enough to matter.
Except it does matter.
It matters because it means I’m not completely stuck.
It matters because it means this body is still mine. These hands are still mine. This fight is still mine.
“Okay,” I whisper to the empty room. “That’s… hideous, but good.”
My hands are shaking. I keep working. Evie would call this finding a foothold, or she’d say something terrifyingly practical like, “Well, don’t just sit there bleeding about it, Rory girl.”
I swallow hard.
“Very sorry to report,” I mutter under my breath, “that I am in fact sitting here bleeding about it a little.”
My voice sounds too loud in the space, so I shut up and go back to the zip tie.
Twist.
Scrape.
Breathe.
Twist.
Scrape…
The door rattles.
My whole body locks.
I yank my hands still behind me and press them flat to the wall, refusing to look up because I don’t want to meet his eyes.
The rolling door lifts with that same awful sound, and light cuts across the floor in a hard gray strip.
Cole steps inside, and immediately I know something’s off. His jaw is tighter. His movements less smooth. He checks his phone before the door is even fully down behind him, like whatever’s on there has annoyed him personally.
Everything’s changing.
Something outside this room is moving.
My heart kicks hard enough to hurt.
They’re getting closer.
The thought flashes through me so fast I nearly choke on it, so I bury it instantly.
Cole paces once across the room, glancing at his phone again before shoving it back into his pocket. “Fucking hell.”
“Something wrong?” I shoot back before I can really think about what I’m saying.
His gaze cuts to me, and here’s a beat where I wonder if I just made a terrible choice. Then he smiles.
“You’re still talking,” he says.
“I’ve always been told it’s one of my strengths.”
That gets me a look.
Good.
I want his attention on my face. My mouth. My expression. Anything except my wrists, which are currently one small miracle and a lot of skin damage away from being useful.
He takes a few steps closer, then turns away again, pacing another line across the room.
That restlessness is still there, the irritation, the tiny, delicious possibility that he’s not as in control as he wants to be.
“You know,” he says, almost casually, “this wasn’t supposed to take this long.”
I blink at him. “No?”
“Things get complicated,” he says, “when people stop behaving the way they’re supposed to.”
I tilt my head. “That must be hard for you.”
His eyes sharpen. “Your Ryder’s always had that problem.”
I hope that if I can keep him talking, I can work on freeing my wrist without him noticing. If I can wind him up, even better. Anything to keep him distracted.
“You talk about him like you know him,” I say. “Do you? Really?”
“I do.”
“Really?” I ask. “Because from where I’m sitting, it sounds less like knowledge and more like you’re still trying to win an argument he’s already left.”
He turns toward me slowly, like he’s deciding whether I’ve earned honesty or punishment. Possibly both. “We used to be family.”
I keep my face neutral, my breathing rhythmic, while behind my back my fingers twist again, testing the loosened edge of the tie.
Pain flashes white.
I don’t make a sound.
“He trusted me,” Cole continues. “I handled things for him. Things he didn’t want to touch directly. Things that kept the machine running.” He pauses. “I was useful.”
That lands somewhere deep, because I know that word. I know what it does to people when it becomes the only way they believe they’re allowed to matter.
Zane’s face flashes through my head for one dangerous second, and I have to force myself back into the room.
Cole’s still watching me, still talking.
So I say the thing that feels true. “He didn’t leave you behind.”
His gaze snaps to mine.
“He changed,” I say quietly. “That’s different.”
His face hardens instantly. “He walked away.”
“He chose something else.”
“He chose to pretend,” Cole snaps, sharper now. “He put on a clean shirt, bought a bar, and decided that erased everything.”
Once I hear it, I can’t unhear it.
This isn’t about justice. It’s not even really about revenge, not in the clean, dramatic way stories like to pretend revenge works.
This is about rejection.
Ryder changed direction, and Cole took it like a personal betrayal. Like abandonment. Like being told you can stay exactly where you are while I go become someone else.
It’s not about what Ryder did.
It’s about the fact that he left, and Cole couldn’t follow.
“Oh,” I say softly.
The word slips out before I can stop it.
His eyes narrow. “Oh?”
I tilt my head slightly, watching him.
“This isn’t about him thinking he’s better than you,” I say. “It’s about him leaving and you deciding that meant you were less.”
The silence that follows is so sharp it could cut glass.
He takes a step toward me.
My entire nervous system lights up like a Christmas tree in hell, but I make myself hold still.
“Careful,” he says quietly.
“I am being careful.”
Behind my back, my fingers keep moving.
Tiny movements.
Tiny miracles.
The loosened tie shifts another fraction against my wrist. My fingers are numb enough that I can barely feel the edge of my own hand, but there’s space there now. Barely. A sliver.
Enough to keep trying.
Cole studies me like he’s deciding whether to admire me or ruin me, and I’m honestly not thrilled with either option. “You think you understand him.”
I swallow.
“No,” I say. “I think I understand you.”
He wanted loyalty. Purpose. place. He wanted Ryder to stay the same man, so Cole never had to ask himself what it meant that he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, change too.
This isn’t some grand crusade against hypocrisy.
It’s heartbreak with a body count.
And somehow that’s worse.
He steps back finally, the room giving me one full breath of space again. “Whatever story you’re telling yourself, it won’t matter when this is done.”
Maybe, maybe not, but I know this much now: he’s rattled.
The thought of Ryder and Zane and Finn arriving soon hits me so hard it almost cracks me open.
Ryder, with his terrible beautiful control, already turning himself into a weapon. Zane, quiet and relentless, tracking every angle until there are none left. Finn, smiling his way through fear until it stops being funny and becomes dangerous.
They are coming.
The certainty of it settles into me like heat, and in the middle of all this fear, all this pain, all this awful metal dark, another feeling rises. I’m not just trying to stay alive here. I’m fighting. For my life, yes, but also for more than that.
For Coyote Glen, with its pine air and gossip and warm lights in the windows.
For The Hollow, the women who closed ranks around me like I already belonged to them, Bill Granger’s grumpy kindness and Lani’s coffee-based therapy, and Ivy’s emotional hurricane energy, the men who made space for me before I even knew I needed somewhere to land.
For Ryder, Zane, Finn, the place I can breathe.
Cole turns away again, pacing toward the door, attention split now between me and whatever is happening beyond these walls.
Good.
Split attention is how people lose.
Behind my back, I shift my wrist again, and the loosened tie gives another tiny bit.
My pulse jumps, but I keep my face calm.
Inside, though, I feel it with startling clarity. I’m not just surviving this. I’m fighting for my place in the world.
For the town.
For them.
And I am absolutely not letting this man take any of it from me.