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Delicately, I tow the band down the length of her hair, bringing her dark layers over her shoulders. The air between us crackles as my gaze travels to the base of her throat where a teardrop diamond rests. My movements slow and cautious, still securing her wrist in one hand, I lift the pendant with the finger of my other.
“Maybe you wanted it to be lost,” I say.
For three solid heartbeats, she doesn’t blink, doesn’t breathe. Her gaze fuses to mine, a lifetime and even perhaps a hundred lifetimes held in the pools of her stormy irises.
My breath lodges in my throat as I release the necklace and turn my bloodstained palm up to her, an appeal issued in the dark encasing us.
Her gaze drops to my hand before meeting my eyes. “I don’t know you?—”
“You do.”
“How can I trust you?”
“You can trust that I’ve never been more selfless than I am right now,” I say. “Trust my intent. I want to protect you.”
She stares at my palm, her features softening as her hesitancy falls away.
Then she takes my hand.
Satisfaction flares in my veins. My long fingers entwine around her slender ones, and I know in the hollow space beneath bone and cartilage I will never be able to let her go.
Wellington stirs on the floor. “Fuck…mother fucking hell.”
The disruption initiates the next sequence of events.
She releases my hand as Wellington rolls over, one side of his face caked in layers of blood. He rubs his bruised eyes before his bleary gaze darts up to her.
“You fucking cunt,” he seethes around a wet croak. Movements clumsy, he digs out his phone from the inseam of his tweed blazer. “My lawyer is going to sue?—”
I kick the phone from his hand. Crush it under my combat boot.
The reverberatingcrackof the screen beneath my heel shatters more than his device.
Our state in this moment is unstable, fragile and volatile, and her eyes are on me, a fire ignited behind her caution and fear. I want to fan the flames, to see the world burn to cinder with her.
Make it our own.
Wellington touches his temple with a hiss. He looks at the bright-red blood on his fingers, then his smashed phone. “You’re the goddamn devil, Locke. You’re finished,” he threatens as he heaves himself up onto his side. “Your career is scorched earth.”
My nostrils flare, and I breathe in the scent of blood lingering beneath the faint honeysuckle.
From my periphery, I see her lower and take the lug wrench in her hand. She holds it out toward him in warning. “Just…don’t move. I need to think.”
Momentarily halted, Wellington glares up at her. “You’re fucking insane. You both are.” His obnoxious chuckle echos against the wood surfaces of the hall, a sick, menacing sound that triggers a dark rage.
I’m a bystander on the edge of this production. The stage is so beautifully set, the script poetry waiting to unfold.
All we need is a catalyst.
And Percy Wellington is nothing if not giving of his efforts.
He spits a trail of blood at the floor. “Seeing how my face bears the proof of your assault, even your pretty little head is quick enough to figure out how this will end, sweetheart.”
As if the endearment triggers her, she tightens her hold on the weapon, her chest rising and falling with quick inhalations as she disappears somewhere within herself. “He’s right.”
The resulting pain that blazes to life within her almost knocks me to the floor. Her state of shock offered her a reprieve, but now, like a dam cracking, that heartache comes flooding back.
I’m hit with the intensity of her anguish so hard, I suffocate under the resounding swell of it.
