Page 86

“You let me live inside the lie,” I whisper. “You took the choice out of my hands.”

His grip eases—not enough to free me. Enough to feel like restraint instead of control.

“You would’ve gone after her,” he says. “You would’ve burned every line you had to get to her.”

“Yes!” I scream. “Because she’s my sister.”

“And you’re my line!” he roars back, stepping into me, rain and fury and fear colliding. “The one I don’t let the world cross.”

The words hit like a blow to the chest.

I shove him hard, palms slamming into his sternum, forcing him back a step in the mud. He lets it happen. Watches me like he’s already recalculating the damage.

“You don’t get to love me like that,” I snarl. “You don’t get to protect me by cutting the legs out from under my choice.”

Lightning flashes somewhere distant, white-hot, carving his face into scar and shadow. I see it then—the terror under the control. The certainty that if he lets me walk into this knowing, he might lose me anyway.

“You’re afraid,” I say, the realization landing cold and complete. “Not of them.”

His eyes sharpen.

“Of me knowing.”

His jaw flexes. Once. Hard enough that I hear his teeth grind.

“Knowing what?” he demands.

“That you chose for me.” My voice shakes, but it doesn’t weaken. It sharpens. “That you decided I couldn’t survive the truth, so you buried it under protection and distance and silence and called it mercy.”

Lightning splits the sky again, close enough this time that the thunder punches straight through my chest. The woods flare white for a breath, and in that flash I see him exactly as he is—soaked, scarred, carved down to instinct and restraint, a man who learned early that control was the only thing standing between survival and annihilation.

“You think I don’t know what the truth does to people?” he snaps. “You think I haven’t watched it break them? I’ve seen what happens when someone like you gets handed the whole weight at once.”

“Someone like me,” I repeat, bitter and incredulous. “You mean a woman who doesn’t go quiet when she’s bleeding?”

His grip tightens again.

“I mean someone who doesn’t stop.” His eyes hold mine like he hates the truth in them. “Someone the world tried to break and couldn’t teach how to stay down.”

I step into him this time, closing the distance he keeps trying to control, my forehead nearly brushing his chest. Rain runs down between us, slick and cold, but there’s heat there too—rage, grief, want, something feral and awake.

“You don’t get to save me by deciding I don’t deserve agency,” I say quietly. “That’s what they did to Scarlett. That’s what they’re doing to Cass. Taking choice and calling it order.”

His breath stutters.

“I was trying to keep you breathing,” he says, and there it is now—raw, stripped. “I was trying to keep you from becoming another name I carry in my mouth like a wound.”

“And instead,” I whisper, “you made yourself the knife, and you know as well as I do that knives don’t get to pretend they’re shields.”

That hurts.

I feel it in the way his shoulders drop a fraction. In the way his hands finally loosen, not releasing me, but no longer holding me still like I might bolt.

“They already have her.” My voice shakes, but I don’t let it break. “They used her voice. Put her inside my house. Inside my head.” I swallow hard, forcing Cass’s name back down before it can ruin me. “There’s no version of this where staying ignorant keeps me alive.”

He closes his eyes for half a second.

Calculation—measured against damage he’s already decided he’ll absorb.