Page 53 of Allegiant

“It hurts,” I whisper brokenly. “It hurts.”

“What does?”

“My heart. He’s gone.”

Samson’s hand pauses on my back. “Who’s gone, baby?”

“Adam,” I choke out. “He’s dead, and it’s all my fault.”

13

SAMSON

This is it. The moment I’ve been waiting for. Rowan’s confirmation that he’s responsible for the death of Adam Willis.

I know what I should do. What my brothers would tell me to do. What they’d expect.

But I don’t reach for my dagger. Instead, I keep rubbing Rowan’s spine in soothing motions. “Who’s Adam?”

I don’t feel bad asking this. Everything I know about him—his name, occupation, address, cause of death—none of that tells me who he was to Rowan. Why he killed him.

Why the anniversary of his death has him unable to get off the floor of his closet.

I’ve killed a lot of people over the years. Too many, probably. Never once have I reacted like this. Not even the first time I took a life.

A psych team would have a field day with me.

Rowan hiccups a few times softly before he answers. “He was my best friend. My everything, really.”

My hand pauses. “Did you love him?”

“Not like that.” A ghost of a smile passes over his lips. “I loved him with my whole heart, but platonically. Adam was like my brother.”

The suspicions that have been quietly growing over the past couple of weeks grow louder. Ones that scream that this case isn’t as cut and dried as it seems. “How’d you meet him?”

“At school. He sat next to me the first day of middle school, and that was it. He never left my side again. Kept all the bullies away, too.”

I rub at my chest with my spare hand. “You were bullied?”

Rowan gives a dry chuckle. More like a wheeze. I suspect he doesn’t have the energy for anything else. “I was an openly gay kid who cared more about dancing than anything else. Yes, I was bullied. Viciously so.”

“I don’t like that.” I flatten my palm against my chest and push, like that might ease the ache there. “Not one bit.”

“Neither did he,” he whispers. “Made sure it stopped. He always looked out for me.” A sob rips out of him, and it carves into my skin. “I didn’t do the same. He needed me, and I wasn’t there. I didn’t listen.”

The skin on the back of my neck prickles. “What happened?”

“It’s my fault.” He shrinks in on himself even tighter, something I hadn’t realized was possible given how he’s already huddled. “All of it.”

“Tell me.” Fuck, I’m not even asking because of The Firm. I’m asking because I can fucking see how this is eating him alive. I’ve been tortured several times before…but watching this beautiful man tear himself apart?

This is far, far worse.

He shudders. “It started a couple of months before…that night. Adam began getting these weird text messages.”

“Weird how?”

“Details of what he’d been up to that day. What he’d been wearing. How whoever was messaging wanted to peel him out of them.”