Down the hall, a murmur carried from the guest room—Emma’s voice, low and soft, probably soothing Candace, whose sobs still ricocheted faintly off the walls. The sound sliced through me with each broken gasp.
I’d tried to be careful. Tried to drag the fight away from them, take it somewhere they wouldn’t have to see—or hear—me snap. But it didn’t matter. When I hauled Garrett toward the foyer, they’d looked up at me with wide, terrified faces—like prey bracing for the next blow. Like they thought I might be the one to deliver it.
And that… that broke something in me.
Because whatever else I believed, whatever twisted codes I carried from the life I’d lived before this one, one truth had always stayed carved into my bones: Women should never have to stand in the blast radius of a man’s violence.
Not the real kind. Not the kind made of blood and hatred and the urge to ruin another human being. I’d grown up around it. Learned its sound, its smell, its consequences. And I’d sworn—no matter how fucked up the rest of me was—that I would never drag a woman I cared about into that shadow.
Yet here they were. Watching me become everything I promised I wasn’t.
Watching me become him.
A tight sound punched out of me, and before I could stop it, my vision blurred. Not much—just enough that I had to blink hard to clear it. One tear slipped free anyway, cutting a hot line down my face.
I scrubbed it off with my palm, jaw locked, shoulders drawn tight. I didn’t cry. Ever.
But the fear in their faces… Candace’s tears. Emma’s scream. It cut deeper than any hit I’d ever taken.
***
Emma
Candace didn’t stop shaking for at least ten minutes.
I held her the whole time—arms around her shoulders, her cheek pressed to my collarbone, her sobs jerking through her like small, violent aftershocks. I’d steered her into the guest room for privacy, a closed door between her and the chaos outside, but the space still felt too bright, too still—like the rest of the world had stopped, and only the two of us were left in the wreckage.
“It’s okay,” I said, again and again, even though nothing about this was okay. “You’re safe. You’re safe now.”
She lay stretched across the bed, her cheek pressed to my thigh as I cradled her upper body in my arms. Every few moments her fingers spasmed like her body was still bracing for the next hit. For his hit.
The memory of it—the slap, the sound, the way her head jerked sideways—kept replaying behind my eyes, each time worse than the last. She made this tiny sound, after. A tiny, broken gasp, like she didn’t have enough air to scream. I hadn’t gotten that sound out of my head since.
“I’m right here,” I murmured, squeezing her hand. “I’ve got you.”
Eventually the sobs turned into trembles. Then trembles into shaky exhales. Her body loosened by degrees, muscles unclenching as exhaustion took hold. She mumbled something I couldn’t make out, eyelids fluttering shut.
I stayed exactly where I was, holding her, too guilty to move. Letting her go felt wrong somehow—like loosening my arms might undo the safety she’d finally slipped into.
So I sat there. Listening to the faint hum of the HVAC and the dull pulse of my own thoughts. And only then… only when the storm in her body had settled… did the one in mine finally catch up. Everything I had bottled in the moment—panic, adrenaline, disbelief—came roaring back. My hands started shaking first. Then my breathing hitched, shallow and uneven.
My mind replayed the dinner table. The insults. The moment Garrett’s hand connected with Candace’s face. The crack. God, that crack—
I pressed a hand over my mouth to keep the noise down, but it didn’t stop the tremble rolling through me.
Terror pressed in from all sides—thick, disorienting, impossible to swallow. I looked down at Candace, then toward the door, imagining Damien somewhere beyond it. My body lurched toward the thought of him before my mind jerked it back.
Damien’s expression as he’d dragged Garrett down the hall seared behind my eyelids—rage, violence, the promise ofdestruction. And Garrett’s words… those I could still hear, ugly and echoing. The fear. God, the fear.
I swallowed hard, easing myself from beneath Candace, placing a pillow beneath her head. Her breath hitched even in sleep, a small broken sound that twisted something deep inside me. I had been so scared. But not for myself. Not even for Candace. Because even shaken and adrenaline-sick, something inside me whispered the truth—quiet but unyielding.The fear had never been of Damien.
It had beenforhim.
For what that kind of rage would cost him. For what it meant that he’d finally snapped. For what he would wake up hating himself for.
And the moment I understood that, my whole body went still—like the ground beneath me had shifted into a new shape I hadn’t been expecting.
I sat there for a long moment, staring at the rise and fall of Candace’s body. The imprint of the hand that had struck her. My pulse throbbed, slow and uneven, like the pieces of me were rearranging into something new. Something terrifying. Something inevitable.
