“You can’t keep me here!” The words came out in a half-sob, half-scream. My lungs burned; my vision tunneled. “If you’ve seen anything, you have to tell me. You owe me that. Did he go deeper into the woods? Did he go to the cabins? Is he okay?”
He just stared at me, with a look on his face like he hated seeing me like this, but I could see the secrets behind his eyes. He was lying to me.
“I don’t care what they told you to do. I don’t care about your orders. Take me to him, Jere. Right now.”
His expression sharpened. The guilt there was fast, sharp, and then gone.
“I can’t,” he said.
My hands shook so badly I could barely keep hold of him.
“What are you hiding from me? What happened to him? Tell me what the fuck happened, or I swear to God I will walk back in there myself?—”
He caught my wrists as I tried to wrench free, pinning them gently but firmly between us.
“Mackenzie. Listen to me.” His eyes locked onto mine. “You can’t go back to Max.”
The world went quiet for a second as I absorbed what he said.
“That’s not funny,” I said, but it came out thin, detached. “Don’t say that to me. Don’t you ever say that to me.”
“I’m not joking.” His voice dropped even lower. “You can’t go back to him. It’s not safe. Not for you.”
“I don’t care if it’s safe.” My laugh was too sharp. I felt wild, enraged, psychotic even. “Do you hear yourself? You think I care about being safe? He’s my husband. Get out of my way.” I shoved at him, tried to duck under his arm. He just shifted, blocking me, his body a wall between me and the tree line.
He wasn’t as big as Max and not nearly as tall, but he was still about 6’1” with lean muscle.
“Move, Jere! I swear to God, I will scream this entire place down and shoot you with your own fucking gun. Move out of my fucking way!”
“We don’t have time for this,” he snapped, for the first time sounding like he might actually lose his grip. “You’re in shock. You’re not thinking clearly. I need to get you to med.”
“I’m thinking fine.” I could still taste dirt and blood and something dry that might’ve been panic. “Max is out there. He’s alone. He thinks I’m dead or gone or—” My voice broke.
His jaw flexed. For a heartbeat, I thought I saw something like agreement flash in his eyes.
“Kenzie,” he said quietly. “He’s in the game now.”
I stared at him. The words didn’t land. They just hung there between us.
“What? How do you know about that?”
Jeremy swallowed, eyes flicking briefly toward the cabins, the trees, somewhere I couldn’t see. When he looked back at me, his gaze was colder, more controlled.
“Max is in the game,” he repeated. “He went all the way in.”
I shook my head, hard, like I could rattle his voice out of my ears. “No. No, he wouldn’t. He wants to protect me, but he would be looking for me first… he would.”
“You saw what he did,” Jeremy cut in, softer but somehow worse. “You saw what he chose.”
“He didn’t choose it!” My scream tore my throat raw. “They made him, or they tricked him, or they did something to him. He wasn’t himself. He didn’t choose this. You don’t know him like I do. He wouldn’t just—he wouldn’t leave me. They attacked him. He wouldn’t stay in there without me.”
I tried again to twist free, to throw myself back toward the trees, and again Jeremy hauled me back, his grip unyielding.
“You’re hurting me,” I gasped, not sure if it was true or if everything just hurt.
“I’d rather you hate me than die,” he said, voice flat. “You go back in after him, you don’t come out. That’s not a theory, Mackenzie. That’s a fact.”
“How do you know that?” My eyes burned; I blinked hard, tears smearing the world. “What do you know that you’re not telling me?”
