By the time I hear the heavy tread of boots, I almost choke on relief—until it sinks in that it’s him. Dean. Not safety. No comfort. Just another storm waiting to break.
The door swings wider under his hand, and he freezes when he sees me on the floor.
“Brooklyn.” His voice is too sharp, too clipped, like a blade. “What the fuck happened?”
I shake my head, chest heaving. “N–nothing. I?—”
“Don’t you dare lie to me.” He’s already crouching in front of me, tilting my chin up so I have to look at him. His fingers are hot against my clammy skin, his jaw tight enough to crack. “Your face says otherwise. Who touched you?”
Panic floods my throat. Because if I say his name, if I tell him Rafe was here, it’ll ignite something I can’t control. Dean won’t just be angry. He’ll burn the world down.
My lips part, then close again. My silence is enough. I see it in the way his expression hardens, the way his grip tightens just slightly on my chin like he’s holding himself back from breaking me with the question again.
“He was here,” Dean growls, more to himself than to me. “Wasn’t he?”
I swallow, tears welling. My voice barely slips through. “He said I’m on borrowed time.”
Dean’s entire body goes still. For one terrifying second, I think he’ll explode. Instead, he pulls back, standing in a fluid motion that reeks of control stretched to the breaking point.
“You listen to me.” His voice is low, lethal. “You don’t leave this house again. Not for coffee. Not for air. Not for a fucking second. Do you understand me?”
I nod, but it’s too fast, too shaky, and I can feel his fury trembling under his skin like a live wire.
“Say it.”
My voice breaks. “I understand.”
Dean leans down, his mouth brushing my ear, his tone dark enough to split me in two.
“If Rafe wants to play games with me, fine. But he doesn’t get to breathe the same air as you. You’re mine, Brooklyn. And if he so much as looks at you again, I’ll put him in the ground.”
The threat doesn’t ease me. It only twists my stomach harder because I know that Rafe isn’t finished.
And neither is Dean.
Dean doesn’t storm or shout. That almost makes it worse.
He paces the kitchen like a predator circling a cage, shoulders tight, every movement precise, deliberate. The silence between his boots on the tile is a drumbeat, and I can feel it echoing in my chest, bruising me from the inside.
I stay on the rug, too shaky to stand, nails pressed into my palms just to keep myself tethered. I shouldn’t have let Rafe corner me. I shouldn’t have gone near him. Dean’s right—it was reckless, stupid, and now the look on his face says I’ve painted a target brighter than blood across my back.
He opens the drawer by the sink, pulls something out. The metallic clink when he sets it on the counter makes bile rise in my throat. A gun. Sleek, black, heavy in his hand. He checks themagazine like he’s done it a thousand times blind, each click of metal sliding into place louder than thunder.
My whole body jolts at the sound.
Dean doesn’t look at me. His jaw works, his temple ticking as he runs a cloth down the barrel. He’s calm. Too calm. And that terrifies me more than if he’d been screaming.
The air smells of gun oil and coffee gone cold. My tears have already dried, but the salt sting lingers in my throat.
Finally, he sets the weapon aside, wiping his hands slowly, methodically, like he’s wiping away the last trace of hesitation.
“I can feel him,” Dean mutters, not to me but to the room, to the walls, to the air that still feels poisoned by Rafe’s presence. “Like smoke under the door.”
The words root deep in my spine.
I want to speak, to tell him I can’t live like this, that I can’t carry the weight of his wars, but when I try, nothing comes out. All I can do is watch him—the way his eyes sharpen, the way something unravels in the quiet edges of his control.
And then he turns. Looks at me.
