Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Grayson
My knuckles are white as I grip the steering wheel.
I keep both hands on it because I don’t trust myself right now. It’s been ten minutes since we left the city behind us. Miranda hasn’t uttered a word since we got in the car. She hasn’t even looked at me. Her hands are still in her lap, unmoving.
I wish she’d say something. I’m driving us back to the estate, but the car is running on instinct while the rest of me is still standing in that office staring at her face.
My kidney. Kozlov agreed to take it in exchange for the debt.
She said it so calmly, as if she was discussing selling off a dress rather than one of her organs.
I pushed her to that point. Had she already been planning it when I told her to stay away from me and my son?
Had she decided this when she was let go from the hospital, something her friend held me responsible for?
The guilt in the pit of my stomach wars with anger. Anger that she was willing to destroy herself without a second thought. My hands flex on the wheel, and I hear a cracking sound. I immediately ease my grip.
My jaw is tight enough to ache. She is a nurse.
She knows exactly what happens once you’re under.
I was so sure she had gone there to give in to Kozlov’s terms. The truth of what I heard makes me want to turn the car back around and rip Kozlov’s head off.
I want his blood on my hands. My wolf wants his heart, to eat the flesh, to show the loan shark the consequences of touching what’s ours.
The road curves. Trees press in on both sides. My foot pushes harder against the accelerator.
And then the other side of it hits, the way it keeps hitting, over and over since Linda read me that address.
I did this.
I voided her contract. Told her to stay away from Ethan.
Said it harshly because I needed it to stick, needed her away from me, away from the bond, away from everything that was going to get her killed if I didn’t shut it down.
I told myself it was the right call, and I left her with nothing.
No job. No Ethan. No reason to fight. I stripped every reason she had, and she walked straight toward the only door still open, which happened to belong to the man who had been sending people to hurt her for a year.
She went to Kozlov because I made sure there was nowhere else to go.
That thought sits in my chest like something burning.
She’s angry with me. I can sense it. Her expression is carefully blank, and she refuses to so much as look at me. She can be angry with me all she wants. I screwed her over. But she can’t be angry over me stopping her from selling her kidney to Kozlov.
The track that splits off toward the lake comes up on the left, and I take the abrupt turn leading to it. She needs to cool down.
The car bumps over the narrow road and rolls to a stop at the bank. I put it in park and throw open my door. Rounding the car to the passenger side, I open her door, and for a moment, I stare down at her rigid profile. She’s still not looking at me.
Fine.
I reach in and grab her by the wrist, pulling her to me till she stumbles out. She lets out a startled yelp. “W-What are you doing?!”
Oh, so now she’s paying attention to me.
She makes a sound of protest, stumbling on the grass, and I keep moving toward the bank. Then picking her up in my arms, I toss her into the lake.
The lake takes her whole.
I stand on the bank and wait, my hands on my hips.
She comes up gasping, hair plastered to her face, water in her eyes, arms cutting through the surface.
“What the—” She drags a breath before shouting, “What is wrong with you?! Are you insane?!”
“I thought you needed to cool off.” I tuck my hands into my pockets.
Miranda’s chest is heaving, and she hits the water with her fists. “You’ve lost your goddamn mind, Wolfe!”
Fury is working across her face, bright and alive, and the thing in my chest that has been clenched since Kozlov’s office loosens by a fraction.
There she is.
“I should be saying that to you,” I growl. “What the hell was that? Is your life so meaningless that you’ll kill yourself to pay off a debt?!”
“It’s none of your fucking business!” Miranda screams at me, hitting the water again. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her curse, and I don’t care.
“Did you think he was going to stop at one kidney?” I snarl. “He would’ve taken everything he could sell. He would have—”
“And?”
Her words have me freezing, and for a moment, I just stare at her, standing drenched in water to her chest, clothes clinging to her.
“And?” I echo, trying to comprehend what she just said. I must’ve heard it wrong.
“Yeah.” Her jaw is tight. “So what? So what if he did?”
That’s when the sickening realization dawns on me. She went in there knowing she wouldn’t walk out. She knew. She wanted to die on that table.
My knees nearly buckle as I look at her.
“W-Why?” The words are torn from me, a desperate whisper. “You’re so young. You have your whole life ahead of you. Why would you want to—Why would you let him—?”
I can’t say it out loud.
My wolf is clawing against the cage of my mind, both terrified and infuriated.
“I didn’t ask you to help me!” That emptiness has begun to fade from her eyes, replaced by a fury so visceral that it relieves me. “I didn’t ask you to pay off my debt. I don’t need your help. I don’t need anything from you!”
That’s it. I wade through the water until I’m standing face to face with her. “Did you expect me to just let you do something so stupid?”
Her head tilts back as she glowers up at me. “Yes. Yes, I do. And why shouldn’t I? Who are you? You and I are strangers. We have nothing to do with each other. So what gives you the right to interfere with my choices?!” She drills a hole in my chest at that last sentence.
Her words piss me off.
“I have every right!” I roar at her, grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her to me till she slams into my chest. My fingers thread in her hair, bunching it together and forcing her head back. “Nobody has more rights to you than me!”
Her breath hitches as shock flashes over her face. And then she hisses, “How dare you?”
She shoves me back with both hands, her whole body trembling. “Just because you paid off the debt doesn’t mean you own me now!”
It’s my turn to be shocked. “I didn’t say that!”
“Leave me alone, Grayson!” She’s shaking so badly that I’m beginning to feel a different sort of fear. I grab her by her upper arms.
“I never said I own you,” I growl. “But you matter to me, Miranda, whether you like it or not. I was not going to sit there and watch you destroy your life.”
“I matter to you?” She stares at me now, the fight fading from her body, but the look in her eyes is devastation. “No, I don’t. You threw me away like everybody else. You walked away, didn’t you? You took Ethan away from me.”
Her last line pierces me.
She loves my son. She tries to hide it, but I have always been able to tell.
You took Ethan away from me.
That part hurts her the most.
When I don’t say anything, she presses her lips together.
“This is my life, Grayson. My debt, my choice, my problem. I never asked you for one single thing. Not once. So why are you here? Why do you keep showing up when I never asked, when you’ve already made it very clear you don’t want me anywhere near your life? ”
She turns and begins wading through the water to get to the bank.
I drag her back to me.
She pounds my chest with her fist, enraged. “Stop doing that!”
“Then stop walking away from me.”
“Why? You do it all the time.” Her barb reaches the mark, and I flinch.
“I’m not allowed to make mistakes?” I demand. “I got a little overzealous, and you punish me by going to Kozlov and signing your death warrant?”
“I don’t want to talk about this with you.” Miranda tries to pull away from me, but my hand goes around her waist, and I hold her in place.
Cold water sloshes around us as I move. “No. You’re not running away. Ethan needs you, Miranda. I—What I said, I was wrong, okay? I was wrong, and I shouldn’t have tried to push you away. I made a mistake, Miranda. That’s all. I didn’t know you’d lost your job at the hospital.”
Her eyes turn away at that sentence.
“If I had known, I wouldn’t have done or said anything that I did. I would’ve made sure you felt safe in my home.”
Her lower lip is trembling, and she refuses to look at me.
It kills me that she’s trying to keep herself away from me, even now.
“It won’t happen again. I’m sorry.”
“Let me go.” Her voice is small and so close to tears that my wolf whimpers in misery.
“Miranda,” I murmur.
“Let me go!” she suddenly cries out, pushing me back. I let myself fall, and her arms come to wrap around her stomach. Her eyes are filled with tears that she doesn’t allow to fall.
“You don’t—You’re no one to—” She can’t seem to get the words out, so I wait. She squeezes her eyes shut for a second, and when she opens them, the grief in them is raw enough to stop my breathing. “Why couldn’t you just stay gone? Like everyone else?”
“Because I can’t leave you alone,” I tell her, getting to my feet. I take her face in my hands.
The mate bond fires the moment my palms touch her jaw.
It has been underneath everything for months, a low, continuous pull I have been locking doors against, and every single one of those doors comes open at once.
My wolf slams forward in my chest with a force that nearly takes my footing in the water.
She is mine. She has been mine since the night she looked at me in the hospital and told me she’d never heard of me, even if I didn’t know it. She’s mine even if I can’t have her.
“I don’t need you.” Her voice is unsteady as she meets my gaze, misery in those beautiful eyes.
“I know,” I murmur, gently pulling her closer.
“You’re a bastard.”
“You’re right.” I brush my lips against hers, helpless against her pain. “I’m a bastard.”
She doesn’t pull away, her lips moving against mine. “I hate you. I really hate you.”
“I know.” I kiss her tenderly.