I want to scream at him. I want to claw my way free.
But all I do is shiver, because I believe him.
His words hang in the air like smoke, heavy, choking, filling me until I don’t know what’s mine and what’s his anymore. My wrists ache where he pinned them; my throat burns from swallowing down the scream I wanted to let out.
And then—like he hears the ragged edges of my breathing, like he feels me trembling against him—Dean’s grip eases. Just enough for blood to prickle back into my fingers. Just enough that I see the shift in his eyes, the fracture no one else would ever notice.
“I don’t…” His jaw flexes, a sound caught between a curse and a confession grinding past his teeth. His forehead drops against mine again, the pressure not cruel now, just desperate. “I don’t want to be like this with you.”
The words hit me harder than any demand. My tears blur him, his features dissolving into shadow and heat, but I can feelthe way his chest heaves against me. I can feel the fight in him too, same as mine, only his is older, sharper, like it’s carved into his very skin.
“I don’t know how to be anything else,” he admits, the whisper rough and almost broken. His hand lifts, threading into my hair but with care this time, not control, brushing damp strands back from my cheeks as if the motion itself might undo the damage he’s already done. “This is all I know, Brooklyn. Taking. Owning. Holding so tight, I break it. And I can’t—” He stops, swallows hard, shakes his head like he’s furious at himself for even saying it.
For a second, I don’t breathe. My skin is crawling, my face wet, and his eyes make my chest hurt.
“You scare me,” I whisper, my voice shredded raw. “Not because you hurt me, Dean. Because I don’t know how to stop needing you when you do.”
He closes his eyes, something vicious twisting across his face like the truth burns him worse than it does me. His thumb strokes my tear-stained cheek, clumsy, almost tender. “I never wanted you broken, Brooklyn,” he says. “But I’ll never be gentle enough to give you back whole either.”
The silence between us is wreckage, hot and ragged and messy. His breath ghosts against my mouth like he’s starving, like he’s two seconds from shoving me back against the wall again—but instead, he just holds me tighter, like maybe restraint is the most violent thing he can give me.
His hand doesn’t leave my face. It lingers, thumb brushing over the curve of my jaw like he’s memorising it, like he’s terrified I’ll vanish if he doesn’t keep touching me. Then, slowly, he steps back—not enough to let me go, but enough to drag me with him, his fingers curling around mine so I can’t mistake it for mercy.
“Come here,” he mutters, voice low, ragged. Not a command this time. Not really. It’s softer, but it still leaves no room for me to refuse.
He leads me out of the kitchen, down the hall where the shadows are deeper, until we’re in the living room. The city bleeds through the glass wall in shades of black and silver, neon streaking the skyline, but his attention never wavers from me. He pulls me down onto the couch with him, the leather groaning beneath us, and before I can blink, I’m folded against his chest, his arms caging me in.
My cheek presses against the rough cotton of his shirt. His heartbeat pounds beneath it, too fast, too heavy, as though he’s holding something back by sheer force of will. One hand grips my hip like a shackle; the other tangled in my hair, not pulling—just anchoring.
For the first time since I met him, the silence feels almost… safe.
Almost.
“You don’t get it,” he finally says, the words vibrating against my ear. His voice is low, uneven. “I’ve bled for men who wanted me gone. I’ve burned for things no one should ever crawl back from. Every time I think I’ve clawed free, it drags me down again. This world—it doesn’t let you choose what kind of man you are.”
His breath stutters, his grip tightening on my hip until I gasp. He loosens it instantly, curses under his breath, then presses his mouth to my temple like he’s begging me not to move away.
“I don’t know how to be good,” he admits, quieter now. “But I know how to keep you. And I’ll do that, Brooklyn. Even if it kills every piece of me that remembers what good feels like.”
Something inside me cracks at that—not from fear, but from the brutal honesty of it. He’s not pretending to be a saviour. He’s not promising redemption. He’s telling me the truth, jagged andunvarnished, and it cuts deeper than any of his commands ever could.
“I don’t want good,” I whisper back, surprising myself. My throat tightens, but I force the words through anyway. “I just want you to stop making me feel like I have to run to survive you.”
His chest heaves beneath me. For a heartbeat, I think he’ll laugh, or snarl, or drag me under again. But instead he just exhales, long and harsh, his lips grazing my hairline.
“You survive me by staying,” he says. “That’s the only way.”
And the way he says it—like a vow, like a sentence—makes me shiver, because for the first time, I don’t know which one it is.
Borrowed Time
The house feels too big without Kate’s chatter bouncing off the walls. Dean disappeared upstairs on a call, and I told myself I’d make tea in the quiet, that the normal act of pouring hot water over leaves would stitch the edges of my nerves back together.
It doesn’t.
The silence thickens instead, stretching, holding its breath. And then… “Pretty little thing.”
The voice is velvet laced with razors, sliding through the kitchen before I can even spin. He’s leaning in the doorway like he’s been there forever, shadows clinging to him as if they know his skin better than the light ever could. Rafe.
