Page 64 of Dangerous Promises

I stare at the door again, closing my eyes on a sigh.

Her pretty face as her eyes filled with tears. Every word I've ever wanted to say to her since the day we met rises to the surface.

"Fuck," I say. And I charge at the door.

My bare feet pound on the carpeted floor runner as I chase her down with purpose. To do what? Who knows. But I don't have to go far to find her. She's standing just by the top of the stairs, gripping the railing as her shaky legs buckle beneath her.

"Sage, wait," I say, huffing in my haste to chase her. She looks at me over her shoulder and the pain on her face nearly rips me in two. So much so that it's a struggle not to fall to my knees right then and there.

The feeling that I need to beg her for something, something I'm not sure I can name, pierces through the veil I'd been holding back.

Her emerald green eyes are red and puffy. Her cute button nose is red and raw. And it looks like she's been crying forhours, not the few minutes it's been since I kicked her out of my bedroom.

She turns and runs down the stairs. It takes me a second to compose myself enough to be able to follow her, yelling her name as I run down the stairs after her. She slips on the tiles in the foyer but still manages to grab the door and burst out the front of the house.

"What the hell are we yelling about at this hou-" Isla says, coming out onto the upper balcony with Freddie in close tow behind her. I don't have time to digest that.

"Sage!" I yell again, running out the front door.

She slips in her attempt to run away from me, falling to a heap in the middle of the gravel.

She looks so fragile like this. I must be the only person who's never seen her as the small, weak, girl that everyone else sees. But right now she looks it. She looks haunted. My grief may be bigger than hers, but her ghost chases her far closer than mine does.

She sobs in a heap, hands pressed over her eyes.

I approach slowly this time. Treating her like the wounded, broken animal that she is.

"Sage," I say, more softly as I come up behind her and put my hand on her shoulder.

"No!" she yells, jumping back from my touch like it electrifies her whole body. She turns to me with puffy eyes that are still leaking tears and a forceful pain that is both shocking and powerful.

She takes a deep breath and her nostrils flare as she looks at me through her eyebrows.

I only briefly notice that Freddie and Isla have followed us out the house and are curiously watching from the porch.

"This ends here," Sage says, her grief suddenly replaced by a potent rage that is solely directed at me. She makes a swipe atme with the knife that I didn't realize she still had. I manage to jump back with only seconds to spare but she isn't done.

She lashes out over and over and over. Screaming with rage as she does. Each time, I only miss her wrath by milliseconds. She's all over the place. Leaving herself wide open with every grief-driven lunge she pushes in my direction.

Her face thrashes savagely, hair splayed out and wild as she tries to slice me. Yet, I can't force myself to fight back.

I grab Sage's arms to subdue her. "Hey. Not here, alright?"

She screams, wiggling in my grasp, knife clutched tightly in her hand. My bare feet tear into cuts as I slip in the gravel, struggling to hold her at bay.

"What the fuck is going on out here?" Anton says, storming onto the porch next to Freddie and Isla, who have not made a single move to intervene or help. "You can't fight here, it's again-"

Freddie rolls a hand across Anton's middle to stop him. "Let them go."

Anton frowns but does as he says, folding his arms as he turns to watch us.

I'm distracted by that long enough that Sage gets the better of me. She wriggles out of my grip and pushes me away with all her might. Before I know it, she's back at it again, slamming the knife towards me, beating her fists against the hands that I put up to block her.

"Sage, stop. Let's just-"

She screams in response.

I've never seen her more wild or feral. While I thought I'd seen her outpouring of grief every time she's tried to kill me before, I know now that I've seen nothing. This is her true grief right here. Raw. Painful. Senseless as she lashes out at me without a care in the world for how much of herself she exposes as she does. Tears stream down her face even as her emeraldgreen eyes bore into me with a hatred and intensity I've only ever seen before in the mirror.