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He slipped out of me, and I bent down and grabbed my skirt off the pavement, dragging it back on with clumsy, shaking hands, still laughing as the damp fabric clung to my thighs in a way that felt both ridiculous and completely deserved.

“Hey,” he murmured instantly as his hands steadied me. “I’ve got you, baby.” His soothing voice cut through the noise in my head. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

The laughter hitched, then broke, something softer slipping in around the edges as I looked up at him. He didn’t look amused. He looked…focused. Like the rest of the world had fallen away and all that was left was me.

Sterling brushed a strand of damp hair off my face, his thumb lingering against my cheek as his expression turned intent, focused in a way that had my pulse jumping again.

“I love you,” he murmured, his blue eyes locking onto mine, piercing and unrelenting.

Like the other times when I’d thought he was about to say it, my first instinct was to flinch…to run. To tell him it couldn’t possibly be true and that I wasn’t ready for it. For a split second, my brain tried to sort his words into the same place it kept all the others—David’s voice whispering it to me as we exchanged our vows, my parents saying it across dinner tables and phone calls, words that had sounded right but had never felt right. Words that had come with conditions. With expectations. With edges I hadn’t seen until it was too late.

But this—this didn’t slide into any of those places. For the first time, the words didn’t feel like something I had to question.

They felt like something I could fall into.

“I love you, too,” I breathed, the words pulling free of me like they’d been waiting, like they’d been building there this whole time just for him.

His eyes closed the second they left my mouth, his expression tightening for a brief, unguarded moment as something deep and sharp moved through him, something that hurt even as it felt right.

I pressed my face into his chest and he stroked my back until the tremble eased and it felt like I could breathe again.

Without another word, he scooped me up and carried us through the rain toward his truck. He opened the passenger door and settled me carefully onto the seat, tucking a stray strand of soaked hair behind my ear and making my throat ache with how gentle he was being. I was dripping all over the leather, but he didn’t seem to mind as he leaned in and brushed one more soft kiss on my lips before he shut the door.

I watched him through the windshield like a woman possessed, rain streaking the glass as he rounded the hood, water tracing the hard lines of his body. His shirt was still out there somewhere in the road, along with my underwear, an offering to the storm. He went to my car and reached in long enough to grab my keys from the ignition and lock up before he walked back to the truck. Sterling climbed in and shook the rain from his hair like a wolf. The truck filled instantly with his scent. Clean sweat. Rain. Sex. Home.

My pulse finally began to settle.

Until I remembered there was still one thing I hadn’t told him yet…

The note. The museum.

My voice barely carried over the rain as I leaned forward and gripped his arm. “Sterling, I didn’t just try to run because I thought you’d hate me once you found out what I’d done. I ran because…someone in Blackwood knows.”

CHAPTER 42

STERLING

“That was a little less artful than your usual,” Ryder drawled as I finished wiping the blood off my hands, the branding iron still glowing cherry-red in the bucket of water beside the chair.

I glanced at the mess I’d made of the man’s eye. The socket was charred black, the flesh bubbling and split where I’d held the iron for too long and too hard. The smell of cooked meat hung thick in the basement air, mixing with piss and fear-sweat.

The guy, some scrawny fuck Ryder had caught creeping on a neighboring ranch, whimpered through the gag, his body jerking against the ropes as the pain finally caught up with the shock. He’d started chanting the second we dragged him down here. “Breathe the deep, feed the deep.” Like it would save him. Like it had saved any of the others.

We had an epidemic of these fuckers now.

“Maybe I’m not feeling like an artist today,” I muttered, flexing my fingers.

Ryder snorted, leaning against the workbench with his arms crossed, his badge glinting under the single bulb. “I can see that. You just turned his eyeball into soup. Didn’t even give me time to appreciate the pop. What’s the rush—got a hot date with your girl and you’re skipping the foreplay?”

Ryder’s grin was lazy and teasing, but his eyes held that familiar dark gleam, the one that said he was enjoying the show just as much as I was enjoying the performance.

I shrugged and picked up a pair of pliers. “I’m tired of not getting answers. Figured I’d skip straight to the part where he realizes talking is the only thing keeping him breathing.”

The prisoner jerked against the ropes, his muffled whimpers vibrating the gag as I stepped closer. He’d spilled nothing useful yet, just denial and terror, even after the chanting and the branding.

I clamped the pliers around a fingernail and ripped it free slowly, savoring the fresh scream that tore out of him. “Tell me,” I said calmly. “Your little friends—have they been watching any girls in town? Breaking into motel rooms? Leaving threatening notes?”

He shook his head frantically, snot and tears mixing with the blood dripping from his ruined socket.