Cinder nosed at his knee, tail low, eyes huge and uncertain. She whined again, a soft, mournful sound she’d never made for anyone else.
He couldn’t look at her. Not now.
The monitors blinked as the storm outside raged, thunder rolling so loud that the roof itself vibrated. He watched the lightning flash against the blackened window and caught a glimpse of his own reflection—a gaunt mask, eyes gone feral, a man so far from home he might as well have never had one.
Alone. Not just tactically. Soul deep.
He shoved Cinder back, harder than he meant to. She recoiled, confusion etched in every line of her body, then crept a few paces away and sank to the floor.
He wanted to apologize, but the words wouldn’t come. He was poison. Everything he touched broke or suffered or disappeared.
He was running out of moves, and now the woman he’d spent half his life fearing and hating had him by the balls all over again.
He gripped the edge of the desk until pain cut through the panic.
He was back in that old cell again. Locked in, lights off, the world reduced to static.
Cinder edged forward, belly to the floor, and let out a tiny whimper. “No.” He threw out a hand, not letting her any closer. “Stay.”
He didn’t deserve comfort. Didn’t deserve anything.
twenty-two
The Hub doorflew open hard enough to punch a hole in the wall.
Jax came through first, boots slapping wet on the wood. Boone was behind him, rain skimming off the brim of his hat. Greta followed right on their heels.
Boone’s dark blue eyes swept the place, taking in Ghost’s grip on the desk, the mess on the floor, and Cinder frozen right where he’d told her to stay.
“You do something stupid?”
The question landed like a spark in dry tinder, and in a heartbeat, Ghost was on his feet and nose-to-nose with Boone, knocking the cowboy’s hat off his head. He wanted Boone to swing first. Wanted a reason to stop feeling everything except the exquisite clarity of a fight.
But Boone just stared at him, jaw set, eyes flat. “Well?”
Something inside Ghost snapped. Five minutes ago, he’d nearly begged a sociopath for mercy. Now the violence had nowhere to go but out.
The phone went first, smashing into the far wall, plastic shattering, the battery skittering across the floor. He grabbed the edge of the table and flipped it.
“Ghost!” Jax shouted.
But he was already gone. Somewhere else entirely. Back in that cell where the walls closed in, where the light never changed, where he’d spent three years before they even told him what he was charged with. Back in the place where he was nothing but a number and a means to an end.
Boone murmured, “Let him burn it out,” but Jax moved up anyway, putting himself in the blast zone.
“Ghost, man, we need to?—”
He snarled and wrenched away, upending the chair and driving it into the floor, splintering a leg.
Jax raised his hands and took a step back. Cinder yelped and made for the gap behind the lockers, watching him with the betrayed eyes of a dog who’d hoped he might be different.
And still he couldn’t stop.
It wasn’t enough.
Nothing would be enough.
He seized a stack of files and flung them across the room, papers exploding like white birds.
