Cove’s pupils dilated then narrowed, fear surging through his expression so clearly that I felt it like a dull, rusted blade under my sternum.
He tried to step back faster, but the floor was wet from the earlier commotion, and his feet slipped out from under him.
He fell hard, one hand skidding through the water as he tried to catch himself. Then he was dragging himself away from me across the wet floor, terrified, and every bloody fucking millimeter of distance was a stab to my heart.
A wound that only I could be held accountable for.
“Cove,” I said, softer now. “Please.”
He shook his head. “No.”
I stopped halfway down the steps, one gloved hand tightening around the railing as water dripped from my wrist to the metal below. “I won’t hurt you.”
I meant it.
I had never meant anything more.
But his gaze skittered past me to the body, and I understood before he spoke that meaning it would not be enough.
“You killed him.”
There it was.
The simple truth.
The permanent one.
I let the mask of a killer settle into the grooves of my face because if I did not, the despair would show too clearly, and there was no use in showing him more monstrous things tonight.
“Yes,” I answered.
And as his expression collapsed, I knew that whatever trust he had given me had just become something I would have to rebuild from captivity.
He snapped into motion with the wild, graceless urgency of a creature that understood it had been cornered by a predator. He twisted onto one knee, nearly slipped again, caught himself against the floor with both hands, and shoved himself upright with enough force that he staggered before finding his balance.
“Cove,” I said sharply, pleading with him in my head to just stay still, to just make this easy, to just sit and wait for me to restrain him.
He ran, and the movement tore through me.
Not because I hadn’t expected it, but because some irrational part of me had prayed that my voice might still be enough to stop him. That after everything, after the body and the truth and the terror breaking open across his face, there might remain some thread between us strong enough for him to at least pause when I said his name.
Evidently, there was not.
Behind me, Ben cursed. “Tobias—”
“Stay with the body,” I ordered, already moving.
“Tobias—please, for the love of god!”
My hands curled into fists, my fingernails biting in sharply to my palms as I made myself stop for just a second.
I stared at the path Cove had fled down while Ben said, “Think before you make a decision you’ll regret.” By the time the last word was coming out of his mouth, I was moving again, leaving him behind.
I sped quickly through the aquarium wing, my wet shoes nearly silent against the floor despite the speed of my stride. Ahead in the distance, Cove’s footsteps were uneven, frantic, and occasionally slipping against the polished surface as he ran past the glowing tanks.
Each sound pained me.
The harsh slap of his palm striking a wall when he took a corner too quickly. The hard, breathless impact of his body catching the edge of a tank stand.
