There’s a pause, and I think she’s gone, but then I hear her. “I’m still here.”
“You have any fucking idea what I’m doing?” I don’t know why I ask. Maybe because she needs to know I’m a fucking animal, and nothing will change that truth.
“Is it something you can say over the phone?”
I glance at Sundown when I answer, my voice flat. “No.”
“Then I understand.”
But does she? Does shereally? “This is the last of our Death Star problems. And Kerri, I’m not rushing this.”
After a pregnant pause, she breathes, “Havoc.” There’s so much weight in the way she says my name I slap my hand on the wall to hold myself steady. “End it.”
“No.”
“Please.”
I close my eyes, the phone suddenly too heavy in my hand. I grip it tighter, with Sundown’s desperate whimpers ringing in my ears as they echo throughout the mill. “I can’t, Kerri.”
“It’s one thing to do a job. It’s another to enjoy it. End it, Havoc. Finish this before it finishes you. Please.”
Please be better.
Please don’t be a monster.
That’s what she leaves unspoken.
“I’ve never hid what I am.”
She’s quiet again before whispering, “I’ve never asked you to be anyone other than you. But this…this ugly…it isn’t you. You’re hiding behind it.”
“Don’t get philosophical on me, Duchess,” I warn her. “You won’t like going down that rabbit hole.”
“Fine.” I hear her breathing, each bated breath heavy. “I called to ask you for a favor.”
“Anything.” The word falls out of me without hesitation.
“Please be with me when we remove my father from life support.”
Fuck me.
Kerri Ward could have asked me for anything. Any-fucking-thing and I would have given it to her—including my life.
Anything but going to goddamn Brighton.
“No.”
“I see.” She says this, but she doesn’tseea goddamn thing. She has no clue that Brighton is the antithesis of everything I value. “Goodbye, Havoc.”
Her quiet sob is a bullet that tears through my heart. Has me setting aside twenty-five years’ worth of hatred for a place I was taught hatesmesimply because I exist.
“Fuck. Kerri. Wait. Yeah,” I grunt out. “When.”
“Never mind, Havoc. It’s fine.”
If I’ve learned nothing else from Wraith and Jester, it’s that when a woman says it’sfine, it’s notfine. More importantly, if I abandon Kerri when she needs me most, I’ll lose her.
Forever.
