“Has gone too far.” The words come out hard. Final. “He’s always gone too far, but I’m not letting it keep happening. Not anymore. I’m afraid of what my brothers are becoming. What I’m becoming. This has to end.”
I slide down until I’m sitting on the running board, legs suddenly unable to hold me up. “Tomorrow night, but without the ceremony? “
“I don’t care about the timeline. Tomorrow night, this is over. I’ll speak to Reese and figure out what we can do.” He crouches in front of me, icy blue eyes level with mine. “I’ll bait him into talking. Get him to confess. The FBI will move in, and it will all be over. For now, I need to reconfigure things for the new timeline.”
“And if it doesn’t work?” The question comes out small. Scared.
“It’ll work.”
“But if it doesn’t?—”
“It will.” He reaches out and cups my face with one large hand. “I won’t let him touch you. Won’t let any of them get to you or hurt you. You have to trust me.”
Trust.There’s that word again. He keeps asking for it, this man who’s given me every reason not to trust him. Who took everything from me and keeps asking for more. I shouldn’t trust him, but I do, and it hurts to admit it because I’m so afraid to give in, to give him this last piece when I’ve already lost or handed over everything else. But looking at him now, crouched in the gravel with his hand gentle on my face and desperation in his eyes, I realize something. He’s not asking for trust. He’s begging for it.
“I need you to pretend,” he says again, quieter now. “Pretend you’re going along with it. Act scared. Act angry. But don’t fight it so hard that Roman gets suspicious. Just go through the motions until I give the signal.”
“What signal?”
“You’ll know it when you see it.” His thumb brushes my cheekbone, so gentle it makes my chest ache. “Can you do that? Can you trust me?”
The question hangs in the air between us.
What choice do I have? I already do. He just needs to know it.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Okay.”
He lets out a breath, tension draining from his shoulders. He stands and pulls me up with him.
“We should get home. It’s getting cold.”
Home. The word still sounds strange. But I nod and climb back into the truck, and we drive the rest of the way in silence. A different kind of silence now. Heavy with secrets and plans and the weight of what’s coming.
The house is dark when we pull up, shadows stretching long across the porch. Calder carries my shopping bags inside, and I follow, suddenly exhausted. Drained.
He sets the bags on the bed in our room, then turns to look at me. “You should rest. Tomorrow’s going to be hard.”
“Hard.” The word feels inadequate. Tomorrow is going to be the hardest day of my life, and he’s calling it hard like it’s a difficult test or a long shift at work.
But I’m too tired to argue. Too tired to do anything but nod and watch him leave, pulling the door closed behind him with a soft click.
I stand alone in the bedroom, staring at the bags full of new clothes. The red dress I tried on this morning. The boots I wore out of the store. Things that feel like they belong to someone else now.
I should unpack. Should shower. Should do any of the normal things people do when they come home from a day in the city.
Instead, I sink onto the edge of the bed and stare at the wall.
FBI. Cover. Signal. Trust.
The words cycle through my mind like a prayer, like if I repeat them enough, they’ll start to make sense. But they don’t. None of this makes sense.
Calder is working with the FBI to take down Roman. Tomorrow night, he’s going to get his father to confess to crimes. The FBI will move in. It’ll be over.
And I’m supposed to trust him.
I press my palms against my eyes until I see stars.
The door opens again. I don’t look up, just listen to his footsteps cross the room. Feel the bed dip as he sits beside me.
