Anything to ease the grief that’s changed him in ways time alone never could.
“I can take it,” I whisper in a pitiful, fragile offering. “Whatever you need to do to me. Do it. Please.”
His eyes are wild with hurt and fury and something older. Grief that never healed, and has only grown in the years of silence.
For a long, suspended heartbeat he just stares, chest heaving in ragged pulls. His fingers stay twisted in my shirt like he’s clinging to the last thread of us, afraid to let go even as he wants to tear it apart.
Then, slowly,agonizingly, his hands unclench.
He doesn’t step back right away. He stays close enough that I feel the heat radiating from him, the faint tremor in his frame, and catch the ghost of his familiar scent beneath the city dust and sweat.
His throat works in a hard swallow, the muscle jumping as he fights for control, and when he finally speaks, his voice is scraped raw.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, and it sounds like the confession costs him. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
The words land heavier than any blow could have.
“We’ll take the information to Gideon,” he continues, voice steadying into something cold and final, “then get you out of the city. Where you go after that doesn’t matter.”
“Bash, no,” I beg, clutching his arm with desperate fingers, and for a fleeting moment he lets me hold on, his muscles rigid beneath my grip. “Please, just listen.”
“Don’t look at me like I’m the villain,” he says, voice cold. “Youdid this. I would’ve died for us, but you threw me away.”
“Please,” I whisper.
He shoves me back and storms out of the room, leaving Cato to glare at me again before he follows Bash out. The lock clicks behind them like a final heartbeat.
My chest has never felt quite so hollow.
I try to shout, to scream my frustrations to anyone who’s willing to listen, but it comes out as a wail. I stumble my wayinto the bathroom, groping in the dark to find the only thing that gives me any relief.
Pain breaks through my madness in a cruel mercy, and as the razor falls to the ground with a clatter, all I can do is sob.
Bash
“You’resurethisisthe place?” I ask Cato as I glance around the street, taking in the cracked pavement and faded storefronts.
“Positive,” he answers. “I’ve met Gideon here once before.”
“When’s the last time you saw your brother?”
Ego cuts in from behind us before he can answer. “It’s been close to a year since the two of them saw each other face to face,” she says casually, “though they pass letters every so often.”
Cato’s mouth drops open in surprise, and I bite back a grin as his head whips over his shoulder to stare at her.
She flashes him a sweet smile and says, “I’d recommend working on your code names, because it was so obvious who you were talking about. But you’re right—Vanesse is hot, and yes, she wears those tight pants because she wants to fuck you.”
“How do you know any of that?” Cato demands.
Ego only shrugs and pops her gum with a satisfied smirk. “Well, most of it because I read your letters. The rest? Everyone wants to fuck you, man. Have you looked in a mirror lately?”
“He spends too much time looking in mirrors,” I mutter, and Cato shoots me a glare.
Ego chuckles as she reaches up to pat Cato’s shoulder, but he speeds up to avoid her, which only makes her laugh harder.
“You know I keep my eyes on everything happening back home,” she says. “If it means sneaking a glance at the incoming messages, so be it.”
“That was a message Isent,” Cato protests with another glare, “not the other way around.”
