Page 171 of Pucked Around and Found Out

“Fuck off, Maddison. I don't have time for your shit.” I try to step around her. She blocks me. I level a glare at her that has made grown men reconsider their life choices.

She doesn't blink.

“I mean it. I can't run that library alone, Xaden.”

“Then don't.”

“Fuck you.” Her voice sharpens. “Unlike you, some of us need that place to study and focus so we can actually graduate. Without Toren⁠—”

“She'll be back.” The words come out before I can stop them, automatic, almost desperate in a way I hate.

“Uh, no she won't.”

Everything in me goes rigid. “What?”

Maddison frowns up at me, and something in her expression shifts, less irritation, more something that looks uncomfortably close to pity. “She's gone, Xaden.”

She's gone, Xaden.

The words echo in a way that has no business affecting me the way they do. “The fuck do you mean?”

“She sent me a text a few days ago⁠—”

I step into her space. “What did it say?”

To her credit she doesn't flinch. She just narrows her eyes and answers. “She said she was sorry. That she wasn't coming back⁠—”

I pull away before she finishes the sentence because I can't stand there and listen to the rest of it. I can't stand there with my face neutral and my hands still and pretend those words didn't just detonate something inside my chest. I move through the building and out into the parking lot just as Cas pulls in.

He gets out of the car, takes one look at me, and his expression shifts immediately into something careful.

“You good?”

“She's gone.”

His brows raise but there's something in the way he doesn't look surprised that ignites a fury in me so instantaneous it nearly blinds me.

“You knew.” It comes out quiet. Lethal.

“I suspected.” He holds his ground. “There's a difference.”

“You didn't think to tell me?” The roar comes from somewhere I don't usually let out in public.

“Fuck you, X.” He doesn't back down, he never backs down, injured or otherwise, and right now I hate him for it. “I told you to stop hiding. I told you to say it. I begged you to say it. I warned you over and over and you chose to be the cold, closed-off bastard you've always been and shut her out.” His voice is rising to match mine, raw at the edges in a way Cas rarely allows. “What did you want her to do? Stay here and be kept at arm's length for the rest of her life because you're too terrified to admit you're in love with her?”

I grip the front of his shirt and press my forehead against his. Hard. “Find her,” I order.

“No.”

The single syllable lands like a match hitting gasoline. I go very, very still, the kind of still that is infinitely more dangerous than rage.

“Come again?”

He shoves me off him, stumbling back slightly on his moonboot, and stabs a hand through his hair. When he looks at me there's no apology in his eyes. Just honesty, brutal and unflinching.

“You are my brother in every sense of the word.” His voice drops. “But I won't help you hurt her anymore.” The words hit somewhere undefended. “I'll admit months ago I wanted her broken. I wanted you to use her and discard her and I pushed for it. But not anymore. She is innocent, Xaden. She is innocent and she is running from something that should have been a reason to stay.” He exhales hard. “You want to hunt her down and drag her back? That's your choice. But I'm not helping you do it.”

“Fuck. You. Vought.”