I don’t realize I’ve been pacing again until I see him.
Luke leans against the front door now as a barricade, shoulders broad, eyes dark, jaw clenched.
Not because he’s blocking me.
Because he’s already decided I’m not going to face what’s coming alone.
He doesn’t move from the door. He doesn’t rush toward me. He doesn’t try to fix anything. He just looks at me like he’s recalibrating the world around us.
“Say it again,” he says quietly.
“What?”
“That you don’t regret it.”
I swallow. “I don’t. I don’t regret it at all.”
“Good.”
There’s no outrage in his voice. No drama. Just his steadiness.
Then he crosses the room slowly and stops in front of me. Not crowding. Not cornering. Close enough that I feel the heat radiating off him.
“You were fifteen,” he says. “He was a grown man.”
I nod once.
“And if you’d killed him,” he continues, “you’d still be the victim.”
Something in my chest cracks open at that.
He pulls me into him, not crushing, not urgent. Just steady. For a long minute, neither of us speaks. His heartbeat is strong under my ear. Mine is uneven.
“I love that you want to protect me. But I’m not someone you shield from a fight. I step into them. With you. Not behind you. You don’t get to protect me from this,” he says into my hair. “You don’t get to carry it alone either. Not anymore.”
I almost argue. Almost. Instead, I let myself lean. Because I am so tired of holding myself upright.
When the knock hits the front door, it’s sharp enough to make us both tense. Luke’s head lifts first. Then mine. We don’t separate.
“Expecting someone?”he asks.
“No.”
The knock comes again, but harder this time. That’s when the door handle turns, and Luke assumes his fighting stance, his every muscle fiber ready to brawl.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
LUKE
The door doesn’t explode inward. It opens with the ease and finesse of old friends dropping by for a visit. Shane steps in first, scanning the room with the automatic assessment of a man who expects trouble. Will follows, shoulders already tight, and Brandon comes last, closing the door quietly behind him.
They take in the scene in seconds. Andi’s tear-stained face. My position is near the door. The charged silence still hangs in the air.
Shane’s gaze shifts between us. “We good?”
No one answers immediately. Andi steps away from me first, and the movement suddenly feels deliberate. Planned. Purposeful.
My stomach drops. I look at her, but she doesn’t meet my eyes.
