Page 27

He’d paused then, like he was pulling out the big guns.

“Bella keeps asking where you are. Says Uncle Zarek doesn’t come to play anymore.”

That one had landed like a sucker punch.

Simon knew exactly what he’d done. I loved that kid like she was my own. Tiny hurricane, nine going on forty.

I told him I’d think about it. He’d clapped my shoulder hard enough to jostle my bones and left.

Now, driving down Chloe’s and my street with my ribs screaming every time I breathed too deep, I replayed that conversation on a loop. Maybe I should go. Maybe I owed them that much. Maybe I owed myself five minutes of pretending everything wasn’t broken.

It wasn’t until the bend in the street that I saw it.

The little blue Mazda sitting in my—our—driveway.

I damn near yanked the wheel hard enough to clip Larry’s mailbox. My foot hit the brake instead, and the truck lurched before I got it under control.

Chloe’s car.

My first thought was stupid and simple and pure: She’s here.

Joy shot through me so fast it almost knocked the wind out of me harder than JJ’s last takedown. I hadn’t felt anything that bright in over a year. It washed through my veins, hot and dizzying, like the first deep pull of oxygen when you come out of heavy smoke.

My second thought slammed right into it.

Stop it.

I didn’t get to feel this way. Not anymore.

I was bad for her. I knew that down to my bones, the same way I knew how fire behaved when the wind shifted. I was a walking mess of grief, anger, and guilt. She’d finally started sounding better. Lighter. Stronger.

I had no business dragging her back into my storm.

I should turn around. Drive away. Call her from the street and tell her I wasn’t home. Let her leave, let her keep healing wherever she’d managed to carve out a little peace.

But my heart did not give a shit what my head thought.

I pulled into the driveway and parked next to her car. My hands shook a little on the wheel. For a long second, I just sat there, staring at the familiar curve of her hood, the dent near the back where she’d gotten too close to a grocery cart three years ago.

Then I shut off the engine and forced myself out of the truck.

Every step toward the front door reminded me why this was a terrible idea. My ribs protested. My eyebrow throbbed. My shoulder pulled. I was bruised, taped together, and exhausted. The last thing she needed was to see me like this.

Too late.

I opened the door and stepped into the house.

“Chloe?” I called, my voice rougher than I intended.

No answer at first. For a heartbeat, panic flickered—what if something had happened? What if she’d come here and…

Then she stepped out of the bedroom into view.

I stopped breathing.

She just stood there in the hall, looking at me.

I drank her in like a man who’d been crawling through the desert and finally found water.