Page 51 of Pucked Around and Found Out

The distance between them contracts.

Not because either of them moves. Just because the air changes.

“Carn—” I start.

“You should get in the car, Tor.” His voice is quiet and completely steady and absolutely does not leave room for argument.

“I'm fine⁠—”

“Tor.” Just my name. Just the way he says it, low and certain, like the conversation is already finished.

I look at Xaden.

Xaden is looking at Carnage.

There is something happening in the space between them that has nothing to do with me and everything to do with me, something that was always going to happen eventually because of the specific nature of the world these men inhabit and the specific nature of who I am to both of them.

I take a step toward the car.

Xaden moves.

Not toward Carnage. Toward me. Just one step, just a shift of weight, just the instinctive motion of a man who has staked a claim he refuses to name and doesn't know how to let go of.

Carnage steps forward too.

“Don't.” The word comes from Carnage, aimed squarely at Xaden, voice stripped of everything except the raw and particular warning of someone who has very little left to lose and is fully prepared to spend it.

Xaden goes very still.

I stop moving.

“You want to tell me,” Carnage says, and his voice stays even, quiet, just carrying enough to reach us both, “why exactly she's wearing what belongs to you?”

The question lands differently than it would from anyone else. Because Carnage isn't asking it to provoke. He's asking it because he sees everything and has already drawn conclusions. He needs Xaden to either confirm or deny them out loud where they become real.

Xaden holds his gaze. “No.”

“She came down here in a shirt.”

A beat.

“And?” Xaden says.

“Where's her shirt?”

The muscle in Xaden's jaw ticks. He doesn't answer.

Something shifts in Carnage's expression. He looks at me then, just briefly, and I watch him read the whole of it across my face the way he always does—the things I don't say, the things I'm trying to hold very still so they don't spill over into the parking lot. He looks back at Xaden.

“You need to step back from her,” he says. “Right now.”

“I don't take orders from you.” Xaden's voice is flat and completely without heat, which is somehow worse than if he'd shouted it. “Not in my town. Not on my road. Not anywhere.”

“Then you take them from her.” Carnage takes another step forward and I see it now, the way he compensates for his side without appearing to. The way his left arm holds slightly closer to his body than his right. Three weeks of healing, still not enough and he is standing here in the dark prepared to put himself between me and Xaden Devlin anyway. “She said she's done. That means you're done.”

“She doesn't get to decide when this is finished.”

“She absolutely does.” Carnage stops five feet from him. “I know men like you, Devlin. I grew up around them. I am one. And I'm telling you right now that whatever you think this is, whatever claim you think you have over her—” he pauses, and his voice drops to something quiet and surgical, “—it ended the second you told her to get rid of your kid.”