My jaw clenched so hard my teeth ached. If I ran, he’d hunt me down. If I fought, he’d use it as an excuse to break me. If I screamed, the sound would simply dissolve into the scrub brush.
I went up the steps because my body wanted to live, and because the thought of Maddy paying for my defiance was a terror more potent than the cabin.
The porch boards groaned under my boots like a warning. The door was swollen with age, sticking fast when I tried the handle. Colin reached around me—his chest brushed my shoulder, a brief, horrifying contact—and shoved the door open with a hard shove of his hand.
The smell hit first. It was the scent of a grave. Old smoke, damp wood, and the sharp, acidic tang of mouse droppings.Something sour and forgotten rotted in the corners. Light slanted through the grime-filmed windows, striping the floor in dusty, sickly gold. A table sat crooked in the center, one leg propped with a flat stone. Two mismatched chairs. A small iron stove with rust blooming along its seams like dried blood.
It was the kind of place designed for things that weren't meant to be found.
I froze in the doorway, my stomach churning. Colin stepped past me as if he were entering a palace. He surveyed the room, a faint, satisfied tilt to his mouth.
“See,” he said. “It’s fine. Private.”
“Why here?” I whispered, my eyes darting toward the shadows.
He shrugged. “It’s quiet. Out of the way. It’s ours for a while.”
Ours. The word made my skin crawl.
He walked to the table and set two items down with exaggerated care. My keys. My phone. He placed them in the center of the wood like a ritual sacrifice. Then he pulled a chair out and sat, folding his hands on the tabletop.
“You’re going to stand there all day?” he asked.
“I might.”
He sighed, shaking his head. “You’ll faint. You’re already pale. You haven't been eating, have you?”
“You don’t know anything about me,” I snapped.
He laughed softly, and the sound made the hair on my arms stand up. “I know you better than you know yourself, Tessa. I know the way your pulse jumps in your neck when you’re lying. I know the way you try to look brave when you’re seconds away from a breakdown. I know what actually scares you. And it’s not me. It’s that I can see through you.”
He nodded at the other chair. “Sit.”
“No.”
His tone didn't change, but the air in the room suddenly felt ten degrees colder. “Sit. Down. Tessa.”
The room felt smaller with every second. The walls seemed to be leaning inward, pressing the oxygen out of the air. My legs gave a warning tremble. I knew he was right; if I didn't sit, I was going to collapse.
I crossed the room in stiff, robotic steps and sat on the edge of the chair, poised to bolt. The wood was cold and rough against my thighs.
“Thank you. That wasn't so hard, was it?”
“What do you want, Colin?”
He blinked slowly. “I want you back.”
The words were so absurd I almost laughed. “Back? You kidnapped me to ask for a second chance? There’s nothing to go back for, I don’t need you.”
His eyes sharpened. “That’s melodramatic. I gave you everything, I protected you.”
“You caged me! I left because you were the problem. You were the thing I needed protection from.”
His jaw tightened, a muscle leaping in his cheek. “You don’t get to rewrite our history just because you’re embarrassed you left. And now you are wrong about being able to live without me.”
Something hot and feral flared under my ribs. I leaned forward. “I was wrong about you being a man. I thought you were a partner. But you’re just a parasite with a bad haircut.”
The air between us went brittle. Colin’s expression went deathly still.
