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The way he looks at me.
My stomach gives out, and I wish the world would swallow me whole.
Sixteen long hours.
“There was a piece missing.” I hate the waver in my voice—the weakness.
Holden’s eyes narrow, his brow dipping. “What?” He almost hisses the word.
I lift my chin, attempt to show courage. “The puzzle you gave me… I completed it, and there’s a piece missing, and—”
“And what?” he cuts in, his eyes no longer on me. “You think I have something to do with that?”
This sick, twisted emotion starts in my gut, makes its way to my chest. I want to laugh—like a deranged fucking psychopath because maybe that’s what I am.
Sixteen. Fucking. Hours.
I stand taller. Lock my knees. Stop myself from running. “And nothing,” I deadpan, regretting every decision that led me here.
“Did you check Esme’s pool house?” he asks, and I already know what’s coming before he says it. “Because you trashed that place pretty bad—”
“Forget it,” I cut in, and I’m so mad at the tears threatening to fall.
He laughs. Actuallylaughs.And it’s not deranged like mine would’ve been. It’s a sound built of humor and degradation. I take a tiny step back at his mocking.
How he makes me shrink five feet with a single sound is… terrifying. And I’m better than this. Stronger. “You don’t need to be a dick, Holden.”
He stops laughing, his lips instantly switching from a smile to a snarl. “I’m sorry you came all the way here, but what the fuck did you expect? Some emotional reunion where we hug it out and walk hand in hand toward the sunset?”
“No!” I almost yell. “I just…” My willpower is fading. Slowly. Surely.
“Justwhat?”
“Nothing,” I mumble, my vision lost somewhere in the emptiness between us. Shaking my head, I refuse to look at him when I add, “You mentioned the puzzle, and I thought it meant something, but clearly I was wrong.”
“You were,” he’s quick to say—the two words acting as a final nail in my coffin. I glance up, noticing the way his knees are bent slightly, the way he dips his head, his eyes searching mine as if trying to see through me… all so he can witness the destruction he’s causing.
And then he smiles.
Wicked.
Deranged.
Because my pain… my pain is his pleasure.
“Sucks you came all the way here for nothing.” He shrugs. “Next time, just text me.”
And then he rises to full height, right before he turns, goes back from where he came. He doesn’t even so much as glance back at me.
And I’m left standing alone…
In the middle of nowhere…
With absolutely no place left to go.
I get back in my RV before I give life to the tears I’d held on to, let them slide down my cheeks, and push aside the single thought that’s been running through my mind since the moment I got here:
I’ve been here before.
