Ophelia’s cardigan lay beside me on the blanket. She’d left it when she walked out. I should have shoved it offthe bed and proven I could sever connections, be the cold bastard I’d been for years. Instead, I reached for it. My fingers curled into the wool and held on.
Thirteen days. That’s all it had taken for them to become part of me. And now, I couldn’t say one thing to save them from me.
Oliver looked up from his phone. “Don’t.” The word was quiet, not a plea but a warning. “Whatever you’re about to say, don’t.”
My mouth opened and closed and opened again. Still nothing.
“You think I don’t know what’s happening in your head right now?” Oliver set his phone aside and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “I can see you trying to find the words that will make us leave. You’re building a case for why we should walk away, why it’s better for everyone, why you’re too dangerous to be around.”
My teeth clenched. He was too bloody perceptive.
“Here’s the problem with that.” Oliver stood and stepped closer. “That choice isn’t yours alone anymore. You gave it up in that basement.”
“Oliver—”
“No. You claimed us. Both of us. You can’t unclaim us because you’re scared.”
He called me scared. I wanted to deny it, to tell him he didn’t understand, that this wasn’t about fear but about fact.
He opened his mouth to say more, but the door swung open without a knock.
Callen stepped inside and closed it behind him. His eyes shifted from Oliver standing at my bedside to me with my hand wrapped in wool that wasn’t mine.
“Leave us,” he said to Oliver, not unkindly, but leaving no room for argument.
A muscle jumped in Oliver’s cheek, and I thought he might refuse. Then he looked at me and nodded once—an acknowledgment that this was a conversation I needed to have.
“I’ll be in the corridor.” He touched my shoulder as he passed.
The door closed behind him.
Callen took the chair Oliver had vacated and sat. He didn’t say anything for a while. He looked at me—the same way he’d looked at me after Elise’s funeral, after I’d put my fist through a wall and then stood there, bleeding, while he wrapped my hand in his shirt.
“You’re going to push them away,” he finally said.
“Already tried.”
“And?”
“Couldn’t.”
He nodded slowly. “Good.”
“It’s not good. It’s—” I stopped. I didn’t have words for what it was.
“It’s terrifying,” Callen said. “I know.”
“You don’t know. You weren’t there when?—”
“I was there for everything after.” His voice was steady. “I was there when you stopped sleeping. I was there when you started drinking. I was there when you decided the only way to survive was to never let anyone that close again.”
“It worked.”
“Did it?” He raised an eyebrow. “You’ve spent seven years going through the motions. Scenes at the club. Submissives you barely remembered the names of a week later. You call that living?”
“I call it safe.”
“You called it a cage and pretended it was a castle.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Elise was sick, Kiernan. So was James. You know that.”
