The building is a skeleton. Blackened brick and twisted metal. The windows are gone, shattered and scorched, and the door barely clings to its hinges. The sign is half-melted. What’s left of my apartment above it has collapsed, the floor caved in and swallowed by the ruins beneath it.
It looks like it was devoured.
Everything I’ve ever worked for—gone. Everything I built with my bare hands. The counters I stained, the shelves I painted, the tiny stupid flowerpots I lined up on the windowsill just to make it feel like home. Gone.
My breath catches somewhere deep in my chest and doesn’t come back. There’s this sound clawing its way up my throat, raw and ugly, and I barely recognize it as mine. A broken, guttural sob that scrapes like gravel.
Tears burn behind my eyes, but they don’t fall.
I’m too angry. Too gutted.
It’s not just a place. It was my life. My only safe space. My only real thing. And now it’s ashes.
I step out of the car, and the moment my bare feet hit the pavement, I wince. The ground is littered with shards of glass, pebbles, and debris. Each step feels like punishment—sharp, stabbing pain shooting up my legs, but I keep going. I don’t stop.
I have to see it up close.
My feet bleed, but I barely register it. My stomach twists into a violent knot, and I grab at it instinctively, fingers curling into the soft cotton of my shirt like that’ll stop the nausea rolling through me.
The smell of char and soaked ash clings to everything. It thickens the air, mixes with the sound of a still-dripping water and the distant low murmur of firefighters who haven’t packed up yet.
There’s yellow police tape stretched across what used to be my front door. It's fluttering in the wind like a sick joke. My home. My entire fucking life. Caged off in a crime scene.
I can’t breathe.
It starts slow—tightness in my chest, the edges of my vision squeezing inward. Then comes the spinning. The weight. The full-body ache that turns to panic. My lungs feel too small, too shallow. I press my hand harder into my stomach, praying I don’t vomit again.
“Lo,” Neve whispers behind me, clutching onto my shoulder. It’s the only thing keeping me upright. “Breathe. You have to breathe.”
I try. I can’t.
Then I hear it. Tires screeching. A car engine roaring like thunder.
Damian’s black SUV comes tearing down the block, fast and reckless, like it’s being driven by a madman. He slams thebrakes. Tires scream. The engine cuts out in a jolt, and the door flings open before the car even fully stops.
And then he’s there.
He looks at the bakery. At me. Back at the bakery.
His face crumples with panic. Raw terror. His eyes widen in horror, mouth parting like he forgot how to breathe.
But it’s not just the expression that knocks the breath out of me. It’s his face.
He looks like he’s been in a fight. His left eye is swollen, bruised and red around the edges. There’s a gash on his cheekbone, angry and bleeding through the crusted mess, and his lip is split open, like someone took a fist to his mouth and didn’t stop there.
I freeze, a new kind of panic rising. My stomach twists hard.
What happened to you?I want to ask, but the words stick.
Because even bruised and bloodied, even broken, he came. And for one fragile second, that means something. For one second, I think—he’s here. I’m not alone.
A sob rips from my throat. Not from fear this time, but from that dangerous, stupid hope that I still don’t know how to let go of.
“Lo,” he breathes, the word breaking open in his chest.
He starts to run toward me, but then the back doors of the SUV swing open—and everything inside me goes cold.
Bridger steps out first. Then Cody—who’s supposed to be in Vegas. And thenhim. The man in the Cross & Sons tee shirt. The one I’ve seen before. Watching. Lurking. The one who stood on the fire escape. The one who never blinked. Still wearing the same damn shirt, like it means something I don’t understand.
