A crack slices through the air like lightning.
The windshield explodes.
Shards of glass rain in every direction—glittering like ice in the setting sunlight. I scream, instinctively throwing my arms over my face. My heart slams so hard I think it might stop. I taste blood.
And then I see him.
Damian.
Standing there, chest heaving, hand curled into a tight fist, blood dripping down from his knuckles. His face is wild—unhinged—like the last thread holding him together just snapped.
His pupils are blown wide, and the look in his eyes is almost feral.
“Lo!” he shouts, voice torn from the deepest part of him. “Don’t go.Don’t fucking leave me.”
Chapter Seventeen
DAMIAN
She turns her back. Climbs intohiscar. And something inside me rips apart—raw, brutal. A steel trap triggered in my chest. I move before I think. Before I can stop it, before reason or restraint can reach me.
My fist slams into the windshield. Glass explodes across the hood. Marlowe’s scream rips through the air, sharp and panicked. I see her flinch inside the car. Eyes wide. Shoulders curled in. Like I’m the threat—because I am. I know it. I fucking feel it.
I pull my hand back from the shattered windshield. Blood is already dripping down my fingers, streaking across the broken glass. It’s everywhere—warm, sticky, dripping onto the pavement. My knuckles are split wide. Throbbing. But the pain is distant, like it belongs to someone else.
And the blood isn’t the worst part. The worst part is her face. That look in her eyes. Like she doesn’t recognize me anymore. Like I’m something she needs to run from. That look destroys me.
How much of a monster do you have to be to make the woman you love look at you like that? She’s fucking looking at me the way my mother used to look at Clay. That same quietterror. That same knowing—like no matter how much you love someone, they can still ruin you. Jesus. What the fuck is wrong with me?
My breath turns jagged. I stumble back from the car, chest heaving, lungs seizing, pain spreading through my hand and not even touching the shit inside me.
I’m not my father. I am NOT my father. Yet Marlowe’s in that car, glass on her lap, her whole body trembling—choosinganother man to escape me.
I did this to her. I’m doing this to her. All because I thought silence was safer than honesty.
I was wrong. So goddamn wrong. I should’ve told her everything. From the start. I should’ve never let Reese watch her without explaining. I should’ve stayed. Showed her what the hell she meant to me instead of hiding it under silence and blood and things I thought would keep her safe.
I kept her in the dark. That’s not love. That’s control. Fear. Survival. But Idolove her. I love her so much it eats at me. It chews through the edges of my sanity. And if she drives away in that car with him, if she lets him be the one to pull her back together, then I lose her. For real. Not just to a fight. Not just for tonight. Forever.
I move toward the car again, desperate, shaking, ready to tear the door open and make her hear me.
But before I can take another step, arms slam around my shoulders from behind.
Bridger.
“Enough,” he snaps, dragging me back. “You’re going to get arrested again, you fucking idiot.”
I fight him for half a second. Maybe less. Then I stop.
I let him hold me back. Not because I want to. Because I don’t trust myself not to do something worse. Marlowe won’t even look at me now.
My voice cracks when I say the words. “Lo, everything I’ve done is because I fucking love you.”
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t even flinch.
Fuck. She won’t even turn her head to face me.
“Say something,” I beg. “Please.”
