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He stares into the bottom of his glass, and we’re quiet for a while, sharing the drink between us, until the bottle slowly empties.

“Why didn’t you leave me?”

I drop my head back and stare at the ceiling, the tightness in my chest almost suffocating. Each breath I pull in is like choking on smoke, and my eyes fill with tears as I shift my attention to the glass in my lap, the ice long gone. Condensation dampens my palm, and I lift my eyes when Ryker touches my cheek.

“We can try again.”

A tear falls free and onto his hand, and my lip trembles, my face tingling with the urge to sob. “Can we?”

“I’m only this way because you wouldn’t have settled for less than a monster, Rose.” He strokes my face. “You’re drawn to men like me.”

Maybe I am. I thought escaping my father had given me a fresh start, that the thread was finally gone—but then I met Zayden. I lived in ignorance for years, but he was always a dangerous man. They all were. They still are.

“I think you’re right,” I whisper, placing the glass in front of him. “I wouldn’t settle for less than a monster.”

He lets his hand drop from my face and picks up the glass.

“To monsters like us,” he says, and he swallows the last of the drink, a droplet running down his chin. “Shall we—” He frowns, clearing his throat, the sound thick and phlegmy. He blinks fast, and rubs his throat, his cheeks blaring red.

I place the small, empty vial on the table, and it rolls away from me, stopping only when it touches the whiskey glass.

My voice is low and tight. “I visited the greenhouse.”

Ryker jolts up, his chair falling over. “Bitch.”

He stumbles to a water jug and chugs from it, eyes wide with panic as he tries to cool the effects of the plant that he’d been so proud to own.

He drops to his knees, choking, eyes bulging out of his head as he shouts in pain. His nose and eyes stream, and his breaths rattle. He’s turning a terrifying shade of red, as if he’s choking on air, and I watch with no expression as I approach him.

When I watched my father die, I waited for the guilt. I wanted to hate myself. I let my flesh and blood bleed out and only called 911 because I didn’t want to get rid of the body myself.

Grant was easy, too. I heard what Yale said and the things Grant had done. The way he tried to excuse violating my privacy. Monica deserves better.

Ryker is the hardest. I loved him once. We were kids, but he was my first love. My first kiss. The reason I believed there was good in the world.

But I can’t forgive him for what he’s put us through.

“Thank you for everything you did for me,” I say. “I really mean that.”

Through his splutters, the tears, snot, and drool, Ryker laughs. It’s a rough, wet sound. “You s-stupid cunt.” He heaves into the wooden floor, but manages to look at me, eyes bloodshot and protruding. “I’m not your p-precious stalker.”

I hold my breath, brows furrowing. “What?”

“I have …” He coughs into the floor. “I have your stupid fucking diaries!”

The missing boxes.

It was all my stuff from home. Diaries I clung to because they were the only parts of my childhood that made sense to me.

Detailed accounts of my life, of my time with Odin …

It was how he knew about my dad.

It was how he knew everything about me.

“You’re lying.”

He spits. “I read all of it. Stupid … girlish …” He starts choking and vomits, whiskey and food spilling across the floor. He screams into the wooden flooring, and he glares at me with bloodshot eyes, lifting his vomit-covered lip in disgust. “I just wanted to take the one thing Zayden Silver loved more than himself.”