My mother joined her, fury rising behind her like waves about to break. I didn’t stay to see the bloodbath that would follow. I was already sprinting. Through the hedges. Past the rose garden. Over the velvet-soft lawn that felt like it would tear open with every desperate step.
I collapsed halfway down the slope, my legs buckling as tears poured down my face, mouth open in a silent scream. For the first time in my life—I was free. It tasted like salt and smoke and fury. Every breath seared my lungs like they’d never filled with air before.
“Fucking hell, Theo.” Thalia’s voice cut through the night like a flare. She appeared out of nowhere, steady as ever, holding out her hand.
I grabbed it like a lifeline, my chest heaving, my knees scraped and grass-stained.
“I didn’t think you had it in you,” she murmured, pulling me upright.
“Neither did I,” I choked, my throat raw. “But I… I had to. I couldn’t keep being?—”
“You might just be worthy of him after all.” Her words were soft, but they split me open like a scalpel.
They sobered me. “Where is he?” I asked, my voice shaking with urgency, desperation. The kind that lived in the marrow of dying men.
Thalia’s hands landed on my shoulders, steadying me as she turned me toward the water. “Down by the lake. Off the eighteenth green.”
I blinked at her, confused. “What? Why?—?”
“I took his keys when he ran out of the marquee. He didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“You’re a fuckingangel.” I pressed a kiss to her cheek and bolted.
I ran like the world was ending. Like everything that had kept me breathing was waiting at the end of that trail. The wind whipped through my hair, the taste of whiskey and sweat clinging to my tongue, every beat of my heart a war drum. My lungs burned. My legs screamed. But I didn’t stop.
Not until I saw him. Laid out beneath the moonlight like a ghost. Flat on his back on the soft green, one arm draped across his chest, the other flung wide with an almost empty bottle of whiskey nestled in his palm. A cigarette burned low between his lips, casting a faint orange glow against the hard lines of his face.
He looked ruined.
I did that.
“Sinclair!” I choked, stumbling to my knees beside him, grit and grass embedded in my palms.
He flinched at my voice, jaw tightening. “Go away, Mr. Astor. Shouldn’t you be celebrating your engagement?”
That name. It hit like a hammer. “I’m not leaving,” I rasped, reaching for the bottle, forhim, for anything. “I came to?—”
“Didn’t Itellyou to get the fuck away from me?” he snarled, sitting up so fast the whiskey sloshed over his fingers. His eyes were red-rimmed, lips cracked, and every word he spoke was dipped in venom. “Iknewyou’d crawl back once the walls started crumbling. But it’s too late, Theo. You made your bed.”
“I didn’t know he’d send methere,” I whispered, my voice shattering. My mind was a frenetic mess. “I was a fuckingkid—I thought I’d done something wrong. I thought Ideservedit.”
He stared at me, unblinking, the cigarette trembling between his fingers.
I leaned in, breaking apart. “I became the man he wanted. The one who could survive in that world. I erased everything soft in me. Everythingyougave back to me. I let him break me because I thought if I could just be good enough—he’d love me. But all I did in the end was hurt you because I was weak.”
Sinclair’s lips parted, but no sound came out.
“I’m not worthy of you,” I said, louder now, letting the words rip through me, shredding myself open for him. “I’m not. I never will be. But Iloveyou, Sinclair. I love you in a way that’s ugly and loud and wrong, and I don’t know how to stop.”
He dropped the cigarette. It burned out in the grass beside him.
“Itriedto stop,” I whispered, my hands shaking. “I tried to forget you. But I can’t.I won’t. I refuse to. You’re it for me. You’re the beginning and the fucking end and every breath in between. I know it’s too late, and I know I’ve ruined it, but please,please, just listen?—”
“Shut the fuck up.” His voice cracked.
Everything in me froze—like the moment before a car crash, complete stillness before the impact.
Sin didn’t flinch. Didn’t speak. Just stared at me with those fathomless eyes that always saw more than I wanted them to. Eyes I’d dreamt of, hated myself for dreaming of. I raised my hand, wordless, desperate—begging him to let me explain.
