I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again, even slower. The words gathered like splinters behind my teeth. None of them right. None of them safe. But I said them anyway. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
It came out small. Fragile. The sound of someone already preparing to be disbelieved. Still, he said nothing. Not a blink. Not a nod. Just that stare. That fucking stare. Like I was nothing but an equation he’d already solved.
“I thought I could fix it?—”
A twitch. His jaw shifted, sharp as a blade being drawn but not yet used. That was all I got. One flicker of tension. No words. No expression. Just the ghost of something deadly being buried again.
My stomach twisted. Shame rising like bile. “You don’t understand what they have on me,” I whispered. “I would’ve come to you?—”
His voice cut through me like smoke sharpened into steel. “Would have.”
Two words. They landed harder than fists. Colder than the night I ran. I blinked. My breath shook. “I tried?—”
“No,” he said. Crisp. Flat. Unshakeable. “Youchose.”
I flinched. There was no volume to his voice. He didn’t need it. He stepped forward once. Slow. Intentional. Each footfall hit the tile like a closing door.
“You chose to lie.” Another step. “You chose to run.”
He was at the edge of the bed now. Close enough that I could feel his presence like a second skin. He didn’t reach for me. Didn’t need to. Just being there—looming over me—was enough to press all the air out of my lungs.
I pulled the blanket tighter around me, but it didn’t help. Nothing helped.
“I left the ring behind because I thought I was protecting you,” I said, barely able to push the words out. “Because I knew if you got involved—if you saw what they had—you’d burn everything down.”
“No,” he said again. But this time colder. Sharper. “You weren’t protecting me.” He leaned forward just a breath. “You were protectingyourself.”
That broke something. Something tight and buried. I wanted to cry. But I didn’t. Because I knew better. Wolfe didn’t assign value to tears. He assigned power to silence. And I had already spent mine.
He crouched—not all the way. Just low enough to make it personal. Intimate. I could see the shadows beneath his eyes. The tension in his throat. But not his mercy.
That was gone.
“You had your chance,” he murmured. Then softer. “And you chose the leash.”
I couldn’t breathe. Not from the pain. Not from the bruises, or the ribs that felt like splintered glass beneath my skin.
But from him. From the way he looked at me like I had never been anything but this—betrayal in skin.Like I hadn’t once stood in his kitchen barefoot, laughing. Like I hadn’t touched his face after nightmares. Like I hadn’t meant any of it.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Even though I knew it didn’t matter. Even though I could already feel the apology wither in the air between us.
It sounded small. Weak. Not enough. Nowhere near enough.
He rose slowly. Like gravity had simply changed its mind about him and he moved with it.
“You don’t get to say that,” he said.
No inflection.
Just a decree.
Something carved in stone.
My throat tightened. “Wolfe?—”
“No.”
One word.
