Black spots burst violently through my vision, and my lungs burned like fire.
“Luke—”
“You think Mercer’s gonna want you after he knows what you are? After everything you begged me to do to you?”
The words shredded through me while his grip tightened harder for one more brutal moment, then suddenly loosened.
I collapsed forward, choking violently for air.
Luke shoved me backward hard enough that I slipped on wet gravel and crashed onto the road shoulder.
Pain detonated through my ribs, and a scream tore from my throat before I could stop it.
Luke froze.
The sound echoed through the trees around us while both of us breathed heavily in the headlights.
Then his expression twisted again into rage. At himself. At me. At the fact that I was forcing him to see what he really was.
“You fucking bitch! How could you do this to me after everything?” he roared, then kicked me hard in the ribs.
Agony spread so violently I genuinely thought something cracked inside me. I curled instantly, choking on pain while tears mixed with rainwater against the pavement.
“Luke, please—”
“You wanna run to Mercer?” he shouted. “Go ahead. Let’s see which one of us gets to him first.”
He kicked me again, this time in the chest, knocking my head back from the impact as I fell to my side. My cheeksmashed sideways into gravel hard enough to split skin near my eye.
The world rang violently, and I could taste blood.
I was trying to register that this was different. This was a rage I had never experienced. I kept telling myself to fight, to get to the Jeep and get away because he was hell-bent on killing me.
He was going to fucking kill me if I didn’t get away.
Then hands grabbed my hoodie again, hauling me upward before my body could process it fast enough.
Luke’s face blurred through tears and headlights and dizziness.
“I loved you,” he said hoarsely.
He genuinely believed this was love and that I was actively betraying him. He couldn’t—wasn’t capable—of love.
“I will never let him have you,” he cried before his fist crashed into my face.
Everything went sideways then.
The road. The headlights. The trees twisting violently through blurred vision while pain detonated through my skull hard enough to make the world pulse in and out around me.
I genuinely thought this was it.
This was how I died.
Broken in the middle of some dark road with Luke standing over me while my family spent the rest of their lives wondering why I never said anything sooner. How Cade would learn my—
Cade.
The thought hit like lightning through the fog swallowing my brain.
