“I didn’t ask him to do this. I never... I would never.” My voice cracked, splintering into a sob.
“I know.”
“Then why?” I looked up at him, tears streaming down my face unchecked, blurring my vision. “Why won’t you stop him? You have the power. You’re the only one who could prevent this. You could...”
“I could,” Sinclair agreed, his expression unreadable. “But I won’t.”
“Why not?” The question came out as a desperate cry.
He crouched down in front of me, his expression grave, his eyes searching mine with an intensity that made me want to look away. “Because this is his choice, my dear. His sacrifice. And taking that away from him, denying him the right to protect you and others in the only way he knows how, would be crueler than anything this world could do to him.”
His words hung in the air between us, heavy and suffocating.
“That’s bullshit,” I spat, my voice cracking with barely contained rage. “You just don’t want to lose your hold on him. You want him in the IRA because it benefits you. Because he’s useful to you, because he’s loyal and strong and willing to do whatever dirty work you ask of him.”
“Perhaps,” Sinclair said, not denying it. His honesty was almost more infuriating than a lie would have been. “But that doesn’t make what I said any less true. Rowen Shay is many things, a fighter, a professor, a man caught between two worlds who’s never quite belonged to either. But above all else, he is a protector. It’s in his blood, his bones, his very soul. It’s whatdrives him, what defines him. And you, Dr. Jefferson, are what he’s chosen to protect.”
“I don’t want his protection if it costs him his life,” I said, my voice breaking on the last word.
“Then you don’t understand him as well as you think you do.” Sinclair stood, straightening his suit with methodical precision, as if we were discussing nothing more consequential than the weather. “Because for Rowen, there is no cost too high when it comes to keeping those he cares about safe. Not his freedom. Not his future. Not even his life. He would burn this entire city to the ground if it meant you and others would survive the flames.”
I stared at the letter on the floor, at the deed still clutched in my trembling hands. The paper was expensive, official, embossed with legal seals that made it all too real. The house. The life. The future he’d promised me over whispered conversations in the dark, when the world felt small enough to hold in our joined hands.
All of it bought with his soul. All of it paid for with a devil’s bargain I never asked him to make.
“I hate him,” I whispered, my words tasting like ash in my mouth. “I hate him for doing this. For making this choice without me, for deciding my life was worth more than his, for leaving me here with nothing but a house and broken promises.”
“I know,” Sinclair said softly, and for just a moment, I heard something almost like sympathy in his voice. “But you also love him. And that’s why this hurts so much.”
He was right.
God help me, he was right.
I loved Rowen Shay with every fractured piece of my heart. Loved him with a ferocity that terrified me, that made me want to scream and break things and tear the world apart to get him back. Loved him in a way that felt both like salvation and damnation, like drowning and finally learning to breathe.
But he was already gone. Already swallowed by the shadows and the violence and the darkness that claimed him long before I ever had the chance.
He’d made his choice. Signed his name in blood and walked into the shadows, all so I could stay in the light. All so I could have the life he thought I deserved, the one he believed he could never give me while he was still breathing. And there wasn’t any damn thing I could do to stop him. There was no cavalry coming, no last-minute rescue, no way to rewrite the ending of this tragedy we’d stumbled into together.
I sat there in Sinclair’s office, surrounded by the remnants of a future that would never be, and let myself shatter. Let the tears come, hot and angry and endless. Let the sobs tear through me until I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but feel the unbearable weight of losing him.
Because sometimes love wasn’t enough.
Sometimes it wasn’t the grand force that conquered all, that broke down barriers and rewrote destinies.
Sometimes, it was just another word for goodbye.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Melissa
The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to swallow what remained of my life in this house. The soft fabric lining seemed to mock me with its emptiness, a void ready to consume the fragments of who I’d been in this place. I folded a sweater mechanically, my hands moving through motions that felt disconnected from my body, from my mind, from everything that mattered. The cashmere was soft under my fingertips, a burgundy color my brother had once said brought out the warmth in my eyes. That compliment felt like it had happened in another lifetime, to another person entirely.
Behind me, Gunner paced. I could hear the measured rhythm of his boots against the hardwood, back and forth, back and forth, like a caged animal searching for an exit that didn’t exist. Each footfall was heavy, deliberate, punctuating the thick silence that had settled between us like fog. The floor creaked under his weight in familiar places—the spot near the window, the board by the dresser that we’d always meant to fix but never did.
“Melissa.” His voice cut through the silence, sharp with barely contained frustration. I could hear the tension in it, the way he was struggling to keep himself in check, to not let his anger spill over into something we’d both regret. “You need to think about this rationally.”
I didn’t turn around. Didn’t stop folding. The repetitive motion was soothing somehow, giving my hands something to do while my world fell apart around me. “I am thinking rationally.”
