CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
I stomp up the stairs two at a time, adrenaline still burning under my skin.
By the time I reach the bedroom, I don’t even get the chance to open the door fully—
Montgomery is already inside.
Leaning against the wall like he’s been there long enough to decide the shape of the room, arms crossed, jaw tight in a way that doesn’t match the casualness of his posture.
“So,” he starts, voice low but sharp, “what the hell was that back there? Telling Shoomaker you’re in love with him?”
I slam the door shut behind me and face him.
“I’m not in love with Shoomaker,” I say flatly, folding my arms. “Nor the Warden. It was for the act. You think I want to be tied to him—or to any of this?”
Montgomery steps closer, eyes burning.
“Bullshit,” he says. “You’re lying to yourself again, Starling.”
My jaw tightens.
“You’ve got this trauma bond with him,” he continues, voice rising just enough to make it feel dangerous. “Shoomaker was the one who pulled you out, the one who stepped in when everyone else let you rot in it. Of course you’re attached to him. Of course he’s in your head.”
“That’s not—”
“It is,” he cuts in, stepping closer again. “Even if you hate it. Even if you fight it. He’s the one you orbit.”
The word lands wrong. Ownership disguised as observation.
Something in me snaps back at it.
“And what?” I challenge, chin lifting. “You think you’d be different?”
That makes him pause—but only for a second.
His expression shifts, something darker sliding in underneath the anger.
“Yes,” he says simply.
The answer is too immediate. Too honest.
Then, quieter—but sharper for it—
“I wouldn’t be the one you had to survive. I’d be the one you chose.”
Silence presses into the space between us.
His gaze doesn’t leave mine now.
“And that’s what it is, isn’t it?” he adds, voice lower, almost controlled again—but barely. “Not just him rescuing you. Not just him saving you. You chose him to mean something. And I’m standing here, watching you act like I’m not even in the running.”
A bitter edge cuts through the last words.
“You don’t even see me as an option,” he says. “That’s the part I can’t stand.”
My heart slams against my ribs, the memory biting sharp.
“You left me,” I shoot back, venom coating every word. “You left me there—more than once. I begged you to take me away from that hellhole, and you just…died on me.”
His jaw tightens. For the first time, the anger in him fractures—not gone, just redirected into something heavier.
“But I didn’t, my rose,” he says, voice lower now, strained at the edges. “I’m here. All of me. Standing in front of you.”
He takes a step closer.
Then another.
Whatever restraint he had left finally gives way.
He drops to his knees in front of me.
My breath catches, but I don’t move.
His hands come up carefully, gripping my thighs like I might vanish if he doesn’t anchor himself there. Not forceful—desperate. Like the control he always wears has finally slipped off and hit the floor between us.
“Begging you,” he says, voice breaking in a way I’ve never heard from him before. “Please—don’t rewrite me as the one who didn’t come back for you.”
His grip tightens just slightly, not painful, just…afraid.
“Please,” he repeats, quieter now. “Let me be the one you choose.”
I drop to my knees in front of him before I can overthink it.
My hands come up to his face, steadying him like I’m the one holding things together now instead of falling apart.
“Montgomery,” I breathe, my voice softer than it’s been all night. “My heart has always chosen you. I just…haven’t figured out why.”
His eyes search mine like he doesn’t trust the words yet—like he’s waiting for the part where I take it back.
I don’t.
“Maybe it’s stupid,” I admit, fingers brushing lightly along his jaw. “Maybe in some twisted way, you saved me before Shoomaker ever did. Maybe you were the reason I kept going at all.”
My throat tightens, but I force the truth through it anyway.
“I survived it,” I say quietly, “for a version of me that still thought you’d be there when I made it out.”
I lean in and press a gentle kiss to his lips—soft, grounding, like I’m trying to steady the fracture between us before it deepens.
For a second, everything else disappears.
The argument. The history. The anger. Even the room itself.
Just him.
But before the tension can shift into something heavier—something dangerous, something neither of us is ready to name—
The door slams open.
The sound cracks through the moment like a gunshot.
We both jerk back instantly, breaking apart as if we were burned. My hand drops from his face, his grip releases my waist, and suddenly there’s distance where there hadn’t been any a heartbeat ago.
Montgomery is already turning, posture snapping back into control.
And I’m just staring at the doorway, pulse racing, breath caught somewhere between what almost happened and whatever just walked in.
Shoomaker enters like a fuse already lit—composed, yes, but hardly. The air shifts with him, heavy and charged, as if the walls themselves know something is about to detonate.
His stare lands on me and doesn’t budge. I catch the sharp edge of restraint in his expression—anger tightly leashed, something deeper simmering just beneath it. Possession. Conflict. Something primal.
He doesn’t speak.
He doesn’t need to.
Three long strides and he is on me—his hand wrapping around my waist with a grip that burns, dragging me backward until the wall slams against my spine.
The impact rattles through me, but I don’t cry out.
I can’t. My breath vanishes the second his solid, unrelenting body presses into mine, like he intends to trap me there forever.
His fingers tangle in my hair—not roughly, but with a ruthless intent that makes my pulse spike. My head tips back under his pull, neck bared and vulnerable. Then his mouth crashes down on mine.
It isn’t gentle. It isn’t cautious.
It is raw hunger—devouring, demanding. Like he is swallowing every “no” I’d ever whispered, every hesitation I’d fought to hold onto. The scrape of his teeth, the searing heat of his tongue—each second of that kiss scorches me from the inside out.
My knees threaten to buckle.
He angles his body deeper, pressing a thigh hard between mine, pushing into the place I’ve sworn no one would ever touch again. My hands find his chest, clutching his shirt—not to shove him off, but to hold myself together, to stop from completely unraveling.
His lips rip away from mine, trailing down my jaw to the hollow of my neck, where his mouth hovers—breath hot and shallow as if he is drinking me in. Then his voice, rough and guttural, rasps against my skin.
“You don’t get to lie to me, Starling,” he growls. “I pulled you out of hell. I know exactly what’s real.”
My heart thunders, pounding so loud I think it might burst free.
He isn’t wrong.
But I can’t let him win this.
With a desperate gasp, I shove him away, needing air, needing space.
“Stop,” I say, voice trembling but fierce. “It was all for the act.”
My chest rises unevenly as I force the words into place, even though they feel like they cut both of us at once.
“If you can pretend to be the Warden,” I challenge, eyes locked fiercely with his, “then I can pretend to be his—in every way.”
Silence echoes between us.
I swallow, holding his gaze even as it feels like it might undo me to do it.
“And that,” I whisper, breath shaky but steady, “is all this is. Pretend.”
Montgomery watches us, his face drawn tight with something I can’t quite name—jealousy, frustration…maybe fear.
Shoomaker’s hand remains at the base of my neck, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw, gaze tracing over every inch of my face like he is trying to memorize me. Like he’d never see me again and is trying to sear the image into his soul.
Then he leans in. Slow. Intentional.
His mouth brushes mine—brief, testing, not claiming. A question more than a kiss.
He pulls back just enough to watch me. To see what I’ll do. Whether I follow him back into it…or leave him hanging there alone in it.
“Please, don’t do that,” I whisper, breath shaky, skin still humming where his lips had claimed me.
His voice is low. Raw. “You said it was all for the act. But don’t stand there and lie to me like it didn’t shake you too.”
Behind Shoomaker, Montgomery shifts—arms crossed, jaw grinding with contained frustration. His voice cuts through the thick air, low and sharp. “You think that was acting, Starling? Because it sure didn’t look like pretend from where I was standing.”
My head snaps toward him, eyes blazing. “Don’t do this. Not now.”
“Oh, look, Captain,” he shoots back, stepping closer, each word sharpened with heat he isn’t bothering to hide. “It looks like someone is being disobedient.”
He is practically boxing me in with Shoomaker and before I can dodge both of them he says, “Let’s do this. Let’s talk about how he gets to walk in here, put his hands on you—kiss you like he owns every inch—and you just let him.”
My pulse hammers in my ears, heat flooding me from the inside out. “He was playing a part,” I bite out, voice uneven.
“Was he?” he murmurs, low and dangerous. “So were you.”
My breath catches.
“When you moaned into his mouth?” he presses, eyes locked on mine. “When your knees gave out, and he had to hold you up so you didn’t fall apart in front of everyone?”
The room tilts—not outwardly, but inside me, where the memory is still too sharp.
Before I can answer, Shoomaker’s hand cuts through the air.
“Enough,” he says sharply, stepping in just enough to break the line between us. His voice is controlled, but there’s steel under it. “Listen here, little Survivor—you’re both wrong.”
My jaw tightens at the name.
“You are acting like a brat,” he continues, eyes fixed on me now. “You are lying to yourself. And you are lying to us.”
A beat of silence.
It lands heavier than anything else so far.
Montgomery lets out a quiet, humorless breath—like he’s been waiting for this exact moment.
Then he looks at Shoomaker, and something sharp and reckless flickers in his expression.
“What should we do about it, Captain?” he asks, voice dropping lower. “Should we punish her until she finally admits the truth?”
His gaze snaps back to me, and it gleams—dark, intent, unsettlingly certain.
The flush that spreads through me is betrayal and need all tangled together.
Shoomaker’s jaw clenches, his dark eyes never leaving mine as he growls, “I will handle her,” he says, eyes locked on mine like I’m the only thing in the room that matters. “I know what she needs. I know what she fears. And I know exactly how she was broken.”
Montgomery’s gaze hardens as he steps forward a bit more, closing any gap between all of us. “And I’m the one who put her back together,” he shoots back, voice roughened by something sharp underneath it. “So this doesn’t get to be yours alone.”
The air between them crackles—two alphas circling, both claiming me like I’m just another thing conquered and kept. I am the fire, the powder keg, the line neither want to cross but can’t ignore.
“I don’t need either of you fighting over me like some trophy,” I snap, voice sharp, heart wild.
Montgomery’s gaze softens for the briefest moment as it snaps to me. “Then tell me the truth,” he says quietly, voice rough. “Was it just pretend?”
I can’t answer—not because it is a lie, but because my body still remembers the fire in Shoomaker’s touch…and my heart still beats faster when Montgomery looks at me like I am the only thing keeping him sane.
Shoomaker steps to face Montgomery, his hand tracing a possessive line down my spine, sending a shiver straight through me. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to,” he murmurs to Montgomery. “She chose me. Back there. Right then.”
He grabs my hand and shoves it in Montgomery’s line of sight.
“And this ring,” Shoomaker says, voice steady, controlled in a way that feels more like possession than explanation, “is a symbol that she is mine. She chose me as the Warden, knowing exactly what that meant.”
My mouth tilts before I can stop it—more reflex than humor.
“That doesn’t mean I’m going to marry you in the real world,” I say lightly, though it lands sharper than I intend. “Again. This is all an act.”
Shoomaker doesn’t even blink.
“Again, Starling,” he murmurs.
He lifts my hand higher, turning it just enough that the ring catches the light between us.
Then he presses a slow, deliberate kiss to the metal where it sits on my finger—like he’s sealing something I didn’t agree to.
“Stop lying to yourself,” he says quietly, and this time there’s no space in it for argument.
I stand frozen between them, burning with a heat that isn’t just desire but something darker—pain, power, and history tangled tight.
“I don’t choose either of you,” I say, pulling my hand back, voice steady but soft. “I choose survival. And I’ll do it again if it means finishing what I started.”
The silence that follows is thick, electric.
Then, unexpectedly, Montgomery steps forward—slow, sure—pushing Shoomaker aside like he is moving a stubborn obstacle. There is something fierce, raw, and untamed in his eyes.
“You think you can fake it?” Montgomery’s voice is low, rough, edged with something dangerous.
I square my shoulders. “This isn’t about—”
“Don’t lie to me, Starling,” he cuts me off, voice sharp and commanding. “Not after what we’ve done. Not after every inch I’ve touched.”
He closes in—too close—his fingers curling around my wrist with a grip that isn’t cruel, but claims me like a cage I can’t escape. He drags my arm slowly until his hand rests just beneath my ribs, palm warm and steady.
“I know this body,” he rasps. “Every scar, every ache, every tension. I know what makes your breath hitch when you’re scared—and when you’re not.”
His palm slides up under my dress I wore for Shaimez, grazing the curve of my breast—not rushed, not crude, but claiming me piece by piece.
“You let him mark your skin with power plays,” Montgomery whispers, mouth close to my jaw, breath hot and trembling. “But you gave yourself to me. Completely.”
My pulse thunders in my ears, my body trembling under the weight of his claim.
He doesn’t kiss me. He doesn’t need to.
His voice, his touch, his presence unravels me faster than any kiss can.
Then, without warning, Montgomery steps back, releasing me—but his fierce gaze never wavers.
“Don’t forget who had you before the mask,” he says, low and fierce. “Who would have burned the whole goddamn place down for you, even if it meant losing you in the flames.”
He moves toward the door, hand on the knob.
Pauses.
Glances back over his shoulder—one final, heavy look.
“You can play the Warden’s game all you want,” he says. “But you and I both know—he’ll never touch you like I have.”
Then he leaves.
And I am left standing in the heat of two men who both claim me—two versions of myself caught in a battle neither of them can win.