I reached out and brushed my fingers gently across Brian’s bruised cheek. He didn't stir.
"I'm so sorry," I whispered.
The tears came without warning.
I'd spent fourteen years not crying. Fourteen years of building walls so high that nothing could touch me. But sitting here in the dark, looking at the man I loved—beaten and bloodied because he'd chosen to stand beside me?—
I cried silently, one hand pressed to my mouth to muffle the sounds, the other still resting on Brian's face. I cried for him. For Shane and Maya and their dreams for their family. For Garrett, quiet and loyal, his car was vandalized for the crime of helping a friend.
I cried for all of them. And I cried for myself—for the girl who'd learned to survive alone, who'd never wanted to need anyone, who'd finally let herself love and now had to watch that love become a weapon against everyone she cared about.
Brian's hand twitched on the blanket. Even in sleep, he was reaching for me.
I took his hand. Held it against my chest.
"I can't let this keep happening," I whispered. "I can't let them keep hurting you. Hurting everyone."
He didn't answer. Didn't hear me. Just slept on, trusting me to be there when he woke.
I watched the monitors blink. Listened to the steady rhythm of his breathing. Let the tears dry on my cheeks.
The guilt was still there, coiled tight. But underneath it, something else. Harder. Sharper.
I didn't know yet what I was going to do. The shape of it was still forming in the back of my mind, half-formed but certain.
But I knew one thing with absolute certainty:
I couldn't let them keep paying the price for loving me.
Whatever it took—I had to end this.
Outside the window, the first gray light of dawn was starting to creep across the sky. A new day. A day when I would have to make a choice.
I pressed a kiss to Brian's bruised knuckles.
"I love you," I said quietly. "I'm so sorry for what I'm about to do."
He slept on, peaceful, trusting.
I sat beside him. Watched the monitors. Waited for the sun to rise, and for the courage to do what came next.
CHAPTER 15
Brian
I woke up in pieces.
Pain first. A dull throb across my ribs, sharpening into something vicious when I tried to move.
Then the smell of antiseptic, the scratch of hospital sheets, the steady beep of monitors marking time I couldn't remember losing.
The attack came back in fragments.
I'd stopped to gas up the truck on my way home. Broad daylight. Busy street. Nothing unusual.
I'd just finished pumping when three men stepped out of a black SUV that had pulled up behind me.
They didn't say anything at first. Just surrounded me. Calm, professional, like they'd done this a hundred times before. Fists and boots, targeting my ribs and kidneys. The soft places that hurt worst without leaving permanent damage.
