Linkin immediately swoops in after her, grabbing me and Lucian both into a dramatic three-person hug. “I love you, idiots,” he declares. “Don’t die. Don’t get kidnapped. Don’t do anything stupid without me.”
“No promises,” I say with a wink.
“Don’t touch me,” Lucian adds dryly.
He gasps. “Rude.”
Rowan hugs me last. It’s brief but grounding, his hand warm at the back of my head. “Shadow Grove is a good call,” he says quietly. “Lucian will take care of you.”
They file out into the lot in a messy parade, giving each other hugs at the door, as Linkin gives an overdramatic salute.
Lucian and I stand in the doorway watching them go to their own rigs to pack up to leave. He slips an arm around my waist, the motion so small it could be a reflex. It’s the same steady pressure he’s given me all day.
“You okay?” he asks.
“No,” I admit.
“We’ll figure it out,” he says with the kind of certainty that makes me feel safe.
I turn back to the rig to start packing for what I try to convince myself is just another fun trip to see my big sister.
What could possibly go wrong?
29
Lucian
Four hours in, the silence stops being silence.
It becomes a living thing in the SUV as it presses against my ribs like it wants to crack them open. Celeste hasn’t said a word since we left her rig this morning. She’s curled against the passenger door with her knees pulled up to her chest, staring out the window like she’s afraid that if she blinks, the world will shift again.
I keep glancing at her, but she doesn’t look back.
And I get it. God, I get it. What happened to her… There aren’t words for that kind of violation. There shouldn’t have to be.
But watching her fold in on herself like this is making me feel like a failure for not being able to reach her.
I grip the wheel tighter as the highway stretches out ahead of us, and I realize if I don’t say something soon, I’m going to lose my damn mind.
I clear my throat and cringe when it sounds too loud between us.
My pulse is hammering, but I try to keep my face neutral and my eyes on the road. I don’t want her to know how terrifying it is to let her in like this and show her what I’ve kept locked down for months. Only my therapist has heard this story.
“Orion and I were working a serial killer case through the Pacific Northwest. We had been chasing this guy for so fucking long that the entire task force was running on fumes. The thing about this particular serial killer is that he was always two steps ahead of us. Every time we thought we had him cornered, he’d already slipped out the back door. Every lead we chased turned to smoke. Then we got word he was about to leave town again. We had gotten so close that we were afraid that if he left, he would just… vanish. Slip right through our fingers after everything we’d put into finding him. The intel we got that night… it was too good to pass up. We didn’t wait for backup; we didn’t even think we had enough time to run it up the chain. We just went. We needed to catch him before he disappeared again.”
The words hang there, quiet but heavy, and I let them. I don’t look over at her. I’m telling her my story because of the silence swallowing her whole. If I have to crack myself open to pull her back from that edge, then that’s what I’m going to do.
I take a deep breath and remind myself that this is in the past. “Orion and I rushed out to the parking lot. We didn’t even talk about it—we just moved. He grabbed the bike so he could get there fast and cut the guy off if he tried to run. I took the SUV so we’d have a way to bring him in. Or at least I tried to. I got in, closed the door, started the engine, and that’s the last thing I remember.”
“My therapist says…” I swallow, the words catching for a second before I push them out. “He says the brain protects you from what you’re not ready to carry yet. That forgetting isn’t aweakness; sometimes it’s survival. He likes to remind me that what happened to me wasn’t my fault, and sometimes you can do everything right and still get blindsided.”
My jaw works once, a small, controlled movement.
“Healing isn’t about being fearless; it’s about not letting the fear decide who you are.”
I just keep my eyes on the road, pretending my heart isn’t beating hard enough to shake the steering column.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, and the words come out small, almost swallowed. “About how I was when you came to see me. I was in shock. Everything after waking up was… scrambled. They told me pieces later–what the med team did, what Orion said–but in the moment, it was like my head was full of cotton and glass. I couldn’t make the pieces fit together. I was trying to come to terms with the fact that I’d made a stupid decision, and that decision cost me my leg. I was so fucking scared. Scared to let you see me as anything less than… whole. Embarrassed, too. It’s humiliating to be reduced to a wound, and to have people look at the missing part before they look at the rest of you. I didn’t want you to have to carry that. So I put up a face and had the nurses make you leave. I was petrified at the thought I might fall apart in front of you.
