Henry went quiet for a moment, listening and letting me spiral, but he didn’t let what I said go unanswered.
“I saw a lot of ugly things when I was in special forces, before I started working for your father, Ben. I know exactly what kind of threats people can pose to each other.”
“She didn’t check her back seat,” I continued, voice dropping into a growl. “Not before she got in. Not after. She didn’t sweep the mirrors, didn’t hesitate, didn’t look around. She has exactly zero situational awareness, Henry. None. She’s a walking invitation for a predator.”
“Ben—”
“She’s a hazard to her own safety through sheer negligence.”
“You’re overreacting.”
“The hell I am!”
“She made a mistake,” Henry said calmly. “People do that from time to time. You of all people should know that, Benjamin.”
“Not her,” I snapped. “Not when she’s running on fumes. Not when she’s this vulnerable. Not when she’s walking around with everything she loves resting on her shoulders like she’s the fucking reincarnation of Atlas.”
“So you’re angry because you care.”
“I’m angry because she’s oblivious.”
“She’s human.”
“She’s mine,” I snapped before I could stop myself. “She doesn’t get to just keep gambling with her safety like this.”
Mine.
The word slipped out of me on instinct, driven by something older than logic, older than the ruin I woke up in after the accident. The scars that mapped my skin still ached when the weather changed, but the one Chrissy Jones gave me inside had never faded. I hadn’t known her before the accident, before the coma, before I dragged myself back into a world that didn’t know what to do with me anymore, now that I was scarred, and broken beyond repair.
But the day she patched up my hand inside Stonewood Hardware — the first time since the accident that anyone besides Henry had looked at me without flinching — something in me knotted itself around her and claimed her. The moment she touched my bleeding hand, something in my chest had fractured and refitted itself into a shape that made sense only when she was near. I’d been hers from that moment on… and she’d been mine long before she ever had a say in the matter.
Silence stretched between Henry and me for a long moment.
“There it is,” Henry murmured. “The real issue. You’re not in control of what she does, and it’s driving you up the wall.”
I closed my eyes, breath hot and ragged in my chest.
“She doesn’t get to be careless with herself, Henry. Not in this world. Not when I’m this close to putting her exactly where she needs to be.”
“And where’s that, Ben?”
“Safe.” My knuckles went white on the wheel. “With me. She might think that towns like Bay Minette and Stonewood are safe because they’re small, but that’s not the reality of the situation.”
Henry sighed, not irritated this time, but something heavier and older.
“You can protect her, son, but you can’t bubble-wrap her whole damned life.”
“I don’t need to bubble-wrap her,” I said. “I just need her to live long enough to open the fucking invitation to the Game.”
Henry huffed a quiet laugh.
“Is that panic I hear in your voice?”
“It’s not panic.”
“Bullshit. You’re terrified she’ll just throw it away without even opening it.”
“I’m not terrified.”
