Chapter 19
Gravel the way her voice cracked when she told me she was falling for me.
The lump in my throat swells until it’s hard to breathe. A bitter sting bites the back of my nose, and before I can stop it, my vision blurs with unshed tears.
I’m not just sad. I’m furious. I’m wrecked. Every emotion bleeds into the next until I can’t tell where rage ends and heartbreak begins.
All I want—all I fucking want—is to go back. To crawl into that bed with her, feel her warmth against me, and live the night over again like it never ended. Like I never walked out that door without waking her and telling her that I was headed to her parents’ home.
“Don’t you dare fucking touch me,” she sobs. Folding in on herself, she catches her breath.
I move closer, slow enough that she can see every step I take, and stop at the tree between us. My palm finds the rough bark, fingers spread wide, showing her my empty hand.
“I’m not touching you,” I rasp, voice raw from everything I’m holding back. “Not unless you let me.”
The silence that follows is thick, alive with the sound of her breath—fast, shallow, uneven. It breaks something in me just hearing it.
“You weren’t there,” she says at last, her voice splintering in the dark.
“I know,” I whisper, the admission tearing through me. “I know.”
“Did they—” Her voice cracks. “Was it the fire that killed my parents? Was it an accident?”
“No.” The word rips out of me, raw and unwilling.
She makes a sound that isn’t human—half sob, half animal—and the trees seem to lean in with it.
“Moore’s men?” she asks, brittle now, testing the edges of what she already fears.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. The truth is all she gets from me, even if it paints me black. “But I’ll find out.”
A beat, then the knife slides in deeper—quieter, thinner: “Benny.”
My jaw locks. His name in her mouth is a blade. It burns.
“He’s alive,” I say. “For now. But he won’t be when I’m finished.”
“No.” Her voice breaks, but there’s iron beneath the crack. “Don’t kill him.”