She’s standing in the middle, chest heaving, one hand braced on the orchid table. Her foot is a mess—cut to shit, blood slick on the tile.
I walk up slow.
She backs away, but there’s nowhere to go.
“When are you going to understand, my little girl, that I’m not the one you need to fight. Let me claim you, let me keep you safe.”
She snorts. “So you can own me?”
I touch her jaw, careful. “So I can save you.”
She spits in my face. The taste is copper and salt.
I wipe it away, then lean in and kiss her. Hard.
She fights it, claws at my face, but then she softens, just a little. Enough to let me in.
I pull back, watch her lips, blood and mud and pine needles smeared across her cheek.
Then I say a word I’ve never said to anyone in my life.
“Please.”
Chapter 13: Dahlia
Ihatehim.Ihate him so much I could carve it into the bone of my own arm and never run out of space for the letters.
But when Bam says "Please," it isn't a question. He makes the word sound like a verdict, but also a plea from the depths of whatever soul he has, as if the last ounce of pride is gone from his body. The greenhouse walls sweat with heat and breath; the scent of my orchids, sickly-sweet and almost rotting in the humid air, tangles with the smell of him—blood, sweat, the stench of a thousand old fights.
He crowds me backward into a bench, hips pressed hard against my thigh, and I feel the tremor in his hands when he reaches for my face. He’s bleeding, some cut opened in the last brawl, andhis knuckles leave red fingerprints on my jaw as he trails them down my cheek. I want to kick and scream and fight, to remind him that I’m not his, that he can’t just own me with a word, but my mouth goes soft. He kisses me like he’s trying to erase everything that came before, every wall, every scar, every threat. Like he needs this more than air.
I clutch the edge for balance, dig my nails into the grain until my hands ache.
Bam’s hands are under my shirt, callused palms up my ribs, thumb at the point of my breastbone. His mouth is brutal, biting, almost desperate. I let him take it, every ounce of hate and want and fear funneled through the fever of his tongue. He’s iron and violence. I kiss back with enough force to break teeth.
His knee wedges between my thighs, prying them apart. I dig a heel into his calf, hard enough to bruise, but he just groans and cages me in, chest to chest, pinning me flat against the spilled dirt. My shirt is up, his hand on my bare skin, and for a second the world outside the glass could be dead and we’d never know.
Then—snap.
A noise outside interrupts us. My body goes rigid. Bam stiffens, his whole frame going still like a dog that’s caught a scent. There’s nothing human about the way his head turns, the way his nostrils flare.
Another sound. The crunch of boots on gravel.
He pulls away, slow at first, then all at once. His face empties out: every trace of lust, of longing, drains away, and what’s left is a statue with murder in its eyes.
“Down,” he says, not even whispering.
Pop, pop.
I don’t move fast enough for his liking. He shoves me hard, toppling me to the floor behind the table. The cold ground bites through what’s left of my pants, and I hiss, but he ignores it. He’s already crossing the greenhouse in four strides, grabbing the first thing at hand—a trowel, laughably small in his fist—and tucking it up his sleeve.
He checks the door. The handle is metal and he holds it with a stillness that looks lazy until you realize his entire body is coiled. He listens.
Outside, there’s a flurry of footsteps. A grunt. Then, the sharp retort of a silenced pistol.
Death sits heavy in my mouth. It isn’t mine, but it might as well be.
Bam whips back, drops low, and points at the rear of the greenhouse. “Window,” he rasps. “Go. Now.”
