“No. You’re the man who took me. Who built a fucking house like he’s been looking through a one-way window in my goddamn head. Who won’t show me his face and won’t tell me why I’m here and keeps leaving me pink lollipops like a trail of breadcrumbs I’m not supposed to follow.” I take a breath. “So forgive me if I can’t just leave it alone.”
The silence between us is the kind that has mass. The kind that takes up space. Then he laughs, a bitter sound that crawls down my spine.
“You’re so sure of your ability to read people. Their feelings.” He inches closer, too close, eyes flashing. “But you can’t read someone who doesn’t have any.”
“Yet you have me locked up in this house, protecting me from something.” I study his eyes, his features. “Not something someone will do if they don’tfeel.”
I can see his jaw clench beneath the buff, the tension in the room a living, palpable thing. But I don’t care. Maybe I’m all survived out. Maybe I’m tired of treading lightly, giving way to fear and uncertainty. Maybe I’m just ready for all of this to end, ready to piece it together so we can move on…even if it means he leaves me in this house to die.
Or kills me himself.
“That’s what you said, isn’t it? You’re protecting me?”
“Fuck this shit.” He brushes past me, anger rolling off him in waves that take my breath. But I won’t let him go. I won’t settle for half-assed answers and loaded silences. Not today.
“It’s linked, isn’t it?”
He stops. Doesn’t turn.
“Whatever it is—whoever it is you’re protecting me from and those lines on your arm?”
“Stop, Sophia.”
“Why. Because I’m getting close?”
He pivots sharply. “Because you don’t know what the fuck you’re walking toward.”
“Then turn the light on. Let me see.”
His hand finds my shoulder, and the world compresses to a single point.
I’m moving before I register it, pushed back by his grip—not violent but absolute, the kind of certainty that doesn’t need force because it’s already decided. My spine hits the wall, and the air leaves my lungs in one sharp exhale. His forearm crashes against the wall beside my head. The vibration ripples through plaster, through bone, until my teeth hum with the aftershock.
“I should lock you in that goddamn room again,” he threatens.
“And I should let you cut your other hand.”
The buff stretches over his jaw, hiding a smirk underneath. “You’re good at analyzing people, yet you can’t tell that pain is never a threat to me.”
“And you are no longer a threat to me.”
He leans closer, eyes searching mine. “I’ve never been a threat to you.”
Like a switch, the air changes. Reth fills every inch of the space in front of me. He doesn’t just stand close—he occupies. His chest a wall, his forearm a cage, his body blocking out the light from the window so all I can see is him. All I can breathe is him.
My heart slams as his gaze drops to my mouth. His thumb finds my bottom lip, gently tracing the curve, and I whimper at the contact, at the tenderness of it.
“Cherry-red,” he murmurs.
My breath stutters. That’s my color. My exact signature shade, one I’m not wearing now, yet he knows it by heart.
The realization slams into me with brutal intimacy. My pulse spikes, and a dark, traitorous heat blooms low in my belly. Thistiny detail should cut like a violation; instead, it has me tilting my head to capture more of his touch.
I should be afraid…but I’m not.
“Show me your face.”
He shakes his head once. A denial with the weight of stone.
