“Listen,” I breathe, licking my lips, trying to steady myself. “I fucked up, Cane. I fucked up so fucking bad. I need you.”
A sob shudders through my chest as I stumble forward. My shoes sink deep into the mud, each step sending cold splatters across my bare legs. I flinch at the sting but keep moving.
“Call me back,” I whisper, my voice cracking as I wrinkle my nose and force myself to focus. I stop walking, slide the phone away from my ear, and send the audio message with my trembling thumb.
“You better be fucking alive,” I murmur into the night.
A sharp snap of a twig slices through the chaos. My head jerks toward the sound, pulse kicking up. I blink into the darkness, straining to decide if it’s real or just the storm playing tricks.
I turn slowly, scanning the dense, dripping woods closing in around me, but there’s nothing—only shadows and the relentless rainfall swallowing every surface.
I take a cautious step, and then, something thin and sharp pricks the side of my neck. I hiss, slapping my hand to the spot, only to feel a brief sting and the faint warmth of blood on myfingertips before the rain washes it away. My pulse stutters, and I feel my knees buckle.
My limbs go too heavy as my thoughts blur. My body folds toward the ground despite my will to stay upright. My eyelids sink, weighted by something far stronger than simple exhaustion.
And then, with a final breath claimed by the storm, the darkness consumes me whole.
My hands clamp around the knife embedded in my gut, her name spilling from my lips in a broken, obsessive litany. The front door hangs half open, rattling against the wind. Rain pours inside, cold air rushing over my skin and raising sharp, prickling goosebumps.
With a grunt, I try to rise. My palm flattens against the floor, fingers whitening as I force pressure into them. My feet shift beneath me, fighting for balance—only for the slick river of my own blood to betray me. I slip, crashing back down hard, breath knocked from my lungs.
Shock leaks out of my bones slowly, leaving a gaping void for pain to flood in. My lips part around a silent scream as agony detonates through my veins, hijacking every thread ofconsciousness. Hot needles of burning torment scatter through my body, swallowing me from the inside out.
There’s so much red—on me, under me, soaking into the floorboards—that it feels like I’m bleeding out only to be filled back up with something darker.
Estella did this. She was terrified, feral, cornered, and her mind did the one thing it thought would push me away.
Despite the physical devastation ripping through me, a smile cracks across my face as Cane’s words echo in my head.
She’ll love you to death.
She stabbed me because she loves me. If she felt nothing, she wouldn’t have fought, wouldn’t have cared enough to break. This is her devotion, her loyalty carved into flesh.
My smile widens, and the twisted relief of it propels me forward.
Slowly, bracing myself, I push up again. My teeth clench so tightly they ache, but I stand anyway. The pain is worse than it should be because she almost pulled the knife out before shoving it back in, realizing too late that removing it would bleed me dry.
A rough laugh slips out of me.
Yes. She loves me. Hard, brutal, and fucking honest.
I stagger from the spot, palm dragging along the cool wall for support. Then, dizziness surges, tilting the room on its axis. The air thickens, suffocating my brain, jumbling my senses into a disoriented blur.
“No. No, fuck,” I rasp, slapping myself weakly to stay awake. “Don’t black out, you fucking?—”
My pulse kicks into a frantic sprint, hammering up into my ears. Heat spreads through me in an unnatural wave, nausea clawing its way up my throat. Flashes of light—white, then black, then white again—strobe across my vision. My eyelids stubbornly drag downward.
My breaths shorten, and I feel my body slipping into shock. Moments ago, emotions drowned me, numbed me, but now that I’m alone, all of it crashes back in with full, merciless force.
I spit out a curse, the word squeezed so tight it throbs at the back of my skull.
My breathing accelerates, fast enough to hurt, and my heart pounds so violently it slams into my ribs like it’s trying to break out. My hands claw desperately at anything that can anchor me, but my limbs go numb, dead weight attached to me only by pain.
I topple.
My body hits the floor hard, bones trembling from the impact as my head crashes against the boards with a dull crack.
And that is the last thing I register before consciousness tears away completely.
