Page 5 of The Next Lie

My voice pitches higher. Panic saws through it. “I saw them. I know I saw them.”

Shiloh steps into my line of sight, but I don’t know how he got there. His face is wrong too, stripped of charm, his mouth tight, his eyes too bright.

“Yank,” he says softly.

I shake my head. He reaches for me, and I flinch.

The movement hurts him. I see it. I hate that I see it. I hate that anything outside this tearing inside me still has the nerve to matter.

“Don’t,” I say, but I don’t know who I’m talking to.

Don’t touch me.

Don’t leave me.

Don’t lie.

Don’t say her name.

Don’t tell me I fucking imagined my own family dead.

A hand moves at the edge of my vision.

Deacon.

He takes one step toward me. His face has gone pale beneath the club lights, his eyes fixed on me with something raw enough that I want to claw it out of him and make him explain.

He reaches. Nash moves faster. His palm lands flat against Deacon’s chest, stopping him cold.

“Not you.”

The words cut through the noise, quiet and absolute.

Deacon’s gaze snaps to Nash. For one second, I think he might kill him.

For one second, I almost want him to try, because violence would be easier than standing here with my lungs collapsing and my sister disappearing down a hallway after telling me I should never have come.

Nash does not move his hand.

His voice drops lower. “You and I need to talk before you get anywhere near my little wolf.”

My little wolf.

The name should anchor me.

It doesn’t.

It reaches for me through too much water.

I’m underwater. That’s what this is. The club is above the surface, lights and voices warped into meaningless motion while I sink underneath it. I try to scream, but my mouth fills with salt and black water and all the years I spent sharpening myself into a weapon pointed at the wrong door.

A woman near the bar turns to stare.

Then a man.

Then another.

They smell blood in the water. This place is built for secrets, and I have become the loudest one in the room without saying anything at all.