FOURTEEN
LOVE AS A WEAPON
STEEL
Three days.
That’s how long it’s been since I walked out of Aria’s ruined office with her scent on my shirt and fear in my hands. Three days since I told myself pushing her away would keep her safe. Three days since I lied to her, to the club, to myself.
And in those three days, I’ve learned one thing. Distance doesn’t protect a damn thing. It just makes the guilt louder. It makes the nights longer. It makes the place where Tama’s ring should be burn like a bruise I can’t touch.
I’ve survived cartel ambushes, prison standoffs, and my father’s ghost breathing down my neck, but nothing has wrecked me the way missing her does.
Now it’s Valentine’s night. Snow falls again, silent, relentless, like the world’s trying to remind me of the night she walked back into my life. The night everything changed.
I sit alone in the garage, the space heater humming uselessly as cold creeps through the metal walls. Tools lie untouched. The Harley I pretended to work on sits half-assembled. My handshaven’t done a damn thing in an hour. Because tonight, I’m losing her.
The garage door creaks open. A rush of cold and a swirl of snow enter in front of Aria. She steps inside slowly, snow melting in her hair, eyes red-rimmed like she’s been holding back the kind of tears that burn more than they fall.
Her voice is soft, almost fragile. “You weren’t going to call me.”
“No,” I admit.
“And I wasn’t going to let you get away with that.”
My chest tightens. Of course, she came. Of course, she found me on a night built to hurt.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I rasp.
“I know.” She closes the door, shutting the storm out behind her. “That’s why I came anyway.” She walks toward me with slow, deliberate steps, as if crossing this garage is crossing a fault line between who we were and who we can no longer be.
“You look tired,” she whispers.
“I am.”
“You look like you’ve been carrying the world on your back.”
“I have.”
Aria stops in front of me, close enough for me to feel her warmth. Close enough that I want to fall into her. Hold her. Bury myself in her. But I don’t. I can’t.
“Isaiah,” she says gently. “Talk to me.”
I take a breath that tastes like metal, winter, and regret. “I can’t be both men, Aria,” I say quietly. “Not for you. Not for them. Every time I choose one, I betray the other.”
She exhales, eyes shining. “Then be the one you have to live with.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know who that is anymore.”
“You do,” she whispers. “You just don’t like him.” Her hand reaches for mine. I let her take it. “I’m scared,” she says softly. “Not of you. Never of you.”
“Then of what?” I breathe.
Her voice fractures. “I’m scared of watching you turn into him.”
Tama. The name hits me like a blow. I look away, jaw clenched hard enough to snap.
She doesn’t let me hide. She takes my face in her hands and forces me to look at her. “You’re terrified of it too, aren’t you?”
