Page 27

He hates that I noticed.

“You show up bruised and bleeding and expect me not to notice,” I continue, voice sharpening around something I don’t want to name. “You disappear for days and come back like nothing happened. And still”—I gesture at the fence, the quiet, the untouched ground—“nothing gets through.”

He says nothing.

“I didn’t ask you to stay,” I say. “I didn’t ask you to watch me. I didn’t ask you to come back split open and pretend I’m too stupid to see who you’re bleeding for.”

He moves.

His hand locks around my arm—iron, familiar, unyielding—and pain blooms sharp and exact.

That grip.

The one that doesn’t let go until you remember how to breathe. The same one that shoved my head under freezing water until my lungs burned and my body remembered it wanted to live.

“Let go,” I say.

He doesn’t.

“I made a promise to my brother⁠—”

“You already fucking left,” I snap. Heat roars up my spine, wild and feral. “Then you came back like I should thank you for it.”

The space between us collapses. The air goes tight, brittle.

“You show up the same day my sister ends up dead.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. Too sharp. Too ugly. “You think I don’t feel the timing? You think I don’t notice you circling like this is your mess to contain? Eye for an eye, huh, Vane?”

His grip tightens.

“You accusing me of that?” His voice goes quiet enough to scare me. “You think I’d touch your sister?”

“If the boot fits⁠—”

His palm slams into the fence beside my head. Wood shudders. Metal sings. The vibration hums through my bones.

“Don’t,” he snarls. His body trembles, control stretched thin as wire. “Not about her. Not about me.”

His breath ghosts my cheek. Hot. Unsteady.

“If I wanted revenge,” he says, voice cracking sharp, “this yard would have more than one grave.”

The words punch straight through me. I don’t flinch.

“Then stop.” I’m shaking now, grief and rage tangled so tight one sounds like the other. “Stop acting like you’re the only thing keeping me alive. Stop standing guard like I belong to your dead.”

My chest heaves.

“And stop using Carter like a leash around my throat.”

Something fractures behind his eyes—fast, buried deep. Good, let it.

“You’re reckless.” He says it like a fact, like something already settled. “You can hate me all you want, but I’m all you’ve got.”

No. The truth settles cold and clean in my chest.

“No,” I say quietly. “You’re just all you’ve decided I’m allowed to have.”

Silence crashes down hard enough to bruise.