Page 66 of Unleashed By Eden

“You have questionable taste,” he shoots back, stealing one of the croquetas from my tray. “You’re here with me, aren’t you?”

I smack his hand away from my food. “Dickhead.”

“Maybe,” he says, wearing that slow, lazy half-smile he knows damn well is a weapon. “And yet you’re still here.”

I roll my eyes and focus on cutting up a piece of grilled octopus before I say something stupid, like that’s the problem.

We eat in silence for a while. The food is genuinely good.

He leans back eventually, tipping his head against the couch, and closes his eyes. The exhaustion sits heavily on him.

I watch him.

I can’t help it.

Tonight, under the hotel lights, the bruise-dark shadows beneath his eyes are deeper, his cheekbones cut sharper. The stage version of him is gone. What’s left is Carter—the real Carter, exposed in a way he’d swing at anyone for mentioning.

He opens his eyes and catches me looking. “What?”

“Nothing,” I lie.

He lets out a quiet laugh, but he doesn’t press.

My appetite disappears. I set my fork down and curl my hands around my shins, pulling my knees up, needing something to hold.

“You okay?” I ask softly.

“Ask me when the results come in.”

“It’s okay to be scared, you know. It means you care enough to want to stick around. To fight.”

Carter releases a slow breath. “People like me don’t exactly age gracefully, Vi.”

My stomach twists.

He keeps staring at the ceiling. “Rock stars, addicts, screw-ups with bad blood and worse habits. We’re not built for long retirements.”

His face smooths out into a faraway blankness. I hate that he expects the worst. But I don’t blame him; I’m doing exactly the same.

He’s resigned, prepared for whatever worst-case scenario they throw at him. That scares me more than any result sheet.

He’s carried this damage so long it’s fossilized—baked into the way he breathes.

I can tell that deep down, some part of him thinks he deserves whatever’s coming. That dying young is just what happens to people like him. That’s the part I don’t know how to fix. Most of the time, you can treat a failing organ. Cut it out, replace it, patch it up. But how do you undo the slow kind of rot that starts when you’re a kid and just keeps spreading, because no one ever taught you how to stop it? He’s already accepted the worst version of this as a done deal. And if he’s already at acceptance, how the fuck am I supposed to fight for the both of us?

More than anything, I want him to stay. Alive, here with me.

But that’s a problem for another day. Tonight, I move closer until my whole side is flush with his, then let my head rest against his shoulder.

We sit there in the quiet. Neither of us fills the silence with jokes or deflection or sex.

Chapter nineteen

Violet

Bang. Bang. Bang.

What the fuck.