“Welcome to the club.”
My thoughts drag through sludge. My palms are damp again, slick with useless sweat, and I’ve washed them so many times they feel almost raw. I’m tired of it—of the nerves, the repetition, the constant cycle of trying to scrub the anxiety out of my skin.
I’m waiting in a surprisingly decent motel, though I haven’t bothered to memorize the address. Somewhere on the outskirts of the city, tucked between the trees and the faint hum of the highway. The room is warm, dressed in neutral tones that should’ve soothed me. But there’s one thing that knocks the balance off.
There are three beds here.
I thumb the side of my phone, lighting up the screen again. Twenty minutes. Only twenty goddamn minutes. Time behaves differently when you’re burning alive on the inside—slower, heavier, stretched thin across every fucking second.
So when the handle on the door shifts, the sound is so soft I almost think my mind invented it. But then, a muffled voice threads through the quiet, and my body reacts before I can think. I jump off the bed, feet slapping the floor, and sprint toward the entrance.
A gust of cold air rolls into the corridor, brushing over my bare arms and raising goosebumps across my skin. Damp strands of my hair stick to my neck, icy and irritating, but all of that evaporates the second I seehim.
Heat erupts inside me, white-hot and merciless, burning through everything in its path. Adrenaline cuts straight through the exhaustion, sharp enough to make my lips twitch with the fury simmering beneath.
Dante steps in behind Cane, and his eyes lock onto mine like a starving animal spotting water. My fists curl on instinct, nails biting into my palms, but beneath the fury, something unwelcome stirs.
Concern. Because he looks… destroyed.
Worse than he did after I stabbed him. Blood spatters stain his face, neck, hands, and shirt. One sleeve is gone entirely, ripped off and haphazardly tied around his arm—dirty-white cloth soaked through with deep, dark red. And the throbbing wound I left in him is swollen, the black stitches tight and angry against his skin.
A flash of jealousy ignites at the realization. Someone had stitched him. Touched him. Dared tohelphim.
“Estella,” he breathes.
I shut my eyes, hating the way he speaks my name—too soft, too reverent, too effortless, like a trap I’m aching to fall into. For one terrifying heartbeat, it nearly makes me forget.
Nearly.
When I look at him now, my whole mind urges me to lunge. To carve new holes into him. To make him feel something that mirrors even a fraction of what he’s put me through.
But I’m tired. Bone-deep fucking tired. Dawn always promises something better, some kind of clarity, but right now I feel none of it. Just this endless, suffocating nightmare with no beginning and no exit.
All of this has unfolded in a single night. The exhaustion weighs on me like wet concrete, pressing into my muscles, settling into my bones.
I want to sleep. I want to forget. I want to wake up in a world where none of this ever touched me. But seeing him here—bruised, battered, with that painfully hopeful gleam in his stupid eyes...
“What the fuck happened to you?” I ask at last, the words scraping out of me.
Both Cane and Dante jerk slightly, their gazes flicking between my face and my closed fists.
“Can I leave you to it and be sure you won’t stab him again?” Cane asks, voice cautious as he nods toward the kitchen. “I have to make a few calls.”
The muscle in my jaw tightens as I shut his question out and drag myself back toward the living room. A single beat passes before the soft, uncertain sound of footsteps trails after me. I drop onto the bed with more force than necessary, and Dante edges closer, lowering himself onto the corner of the mattress like he’s afraid I might snap.
For several stretched seconds, silence settles between us. The storm has finally spent itself, leaving the world washed andbreathless. Thin rays of sunlight pierce the breaking clouds, the first hints of dawn pressing weak gold into the gloom. They spill into the dark room, catching on drifting dust and broken shadows, giving shape and color to the space.
I turn my head toward him, and the light lands across his face. It paints every line of exhaustion, every buried ache—physical and emotional—until the sight of it stings tears into my eyes.
As much as I hate it, as much as I wish it would all disappear, nothing between us ever evaporated. The pull remains—cosmic, magnetic, an invisible gravity dragging us together even now. And strangest of all, after I stabbed him, something in that connection only deepened, binding us tighter when logic says it should have snapped.
Clicking my tongue in irritation, I shift closer. He goes still, watching every move I make as I reach for his arm and begin unwrapping the pathetic excuse for a bandage. Blood bursts out instantly, and the moment I catch sight of the weak, crooked stitches poking from his skin—along with the unmistakable bite marks—my eyes widen, and shock rolls through me in a sharp wave.
“What…” The word slips out, thin and useless. The only real question roaring through my head isWhat the actual fucking fuck?but I swallow it back, scrambling for something less raw, less revealing.
I refuse to let him see the full scope of how much he still matters. “What happened?” I finally manage, barely more than a whisper.
He drags in a breath, his chest trembling at the top of the inhale. “Lucia locked me in the cage. I thought she might try it, so I hid the key in my arm. It let me get out.”
