Page 153 of No Good Fight

“You bought the tools. You used burner phones. You followed me everywhere. You sent messages. You left pictures. You broke into my apartment.” I shift my thumb again and feel the strap start to slide. “You didn’t plan anything as clean as you seem to think. You left pieces of yourself everywhere because you couldn’t stand the idea that I might not know it was you.”

Something changes in his expression.

I know that look.

I used to see it right before he reminded me how much easier everything would be if I stopped making him angry.

“That’s what this place is for, isn’t it?” I ask. “Mason Street didn’t work, so you brought me somewhere else everyone already thinks is dangerous.”

“You came here on your own.”

“So you could tell yourself that matters.”

“You stole Ryder’s truck and drove straight to me.”

“For Mrs. Vance. Not to you. And trust me. I made damn sure the trail leads right back to you.”

His face goes blank.

I hear the faint scrape through the wall again and pull one last time.

My hand comes free.

I don’t move it immediately.

Preston turns toward the table, reaching for something beside the photographs, and I slide my freed hand down the outside of the chair. My fingers close around the metal buckle securing my other wrist.

“You’re still doing it,” he says without looking at me. “Making everyone else the reason for what you do. Mrs. Vance. Josh. Ryder. You never take responsibility for anything.”

I work at the buckle with fingertips that barely want to cooperate, keeping my hand hidden against the outside of the chair while Preston rearranges the photographs on the table. The metal is slick beneath my fingers, and every time I think I have the clasp angled correctly, it slips away again. I have to force myself not to look down. Preston has always been good at noticing the second my attention goes somewhere he doesn’t want it.

“You burned an apartment building because I broke up with you.”

His hand pauses over one of the photographs.

For a moment, he doesn’t turn around. When he finally does, the look he gives me is almost offended, like I’ve deliberately simplified something complicated.

“You disappeared.”

The buckle shifts beneath my thumb.

“I left.”

“There’s a difference.”

“Not to you.”

He comes around the table slowly, and I stop moving my hand until his attention settles back on my face. There was a time when that look would have made me start explaining myself. I would have tried to make him understand why I needed space, why I was unhappy, why being afraid of the person I loved wasn’t something I could fix by trying harder.

I don’t owe him another explanation.

“You belonged with me,” he says.

My thumb finally catches the edge of the clasp.

I keep my face still.

“That was always your problem, Preston. You thought loving me meant owning me.”