Page 28

She was thinner than she used to be, but not in that hollowed-out, starved way she’d had right after we lost the second baby. Her dark hair fell around her shoulders, shiny and healthy. Her skin had color again, not that awful gray pallor that had haunted her for months.

Her eyes—God, her eyes. Brown and wide and so very bright. They didn’t look lost. Not like before. There was fear there, sure, and worry and about eight thousand things she wasn’t saying yet. But there was also something else I hadn’t seen in too long.

She looked… glad to see me.

For half a second, I let myself soak that in. Let myself believe it.

Then I remembered what I must look like.

Her expression shifted in real time—relief to something almost like joy, then straight into panic, then hard into concern.

“What in the hell happened?” she gasped, moving toward me before I could get my mouth working. “Were you attacked?”

Ah, shit.

Right. The face.

I’d forgotten about the butterfly bandage holding my eyebrow together. The faint purpling around my eye that was going to be a lovely shade of black by morning. The way my left arm hovered close to my ribs like I was trying to hold myself in place.

To me, it had already faded into background noise. To her, it was probably a flashing siren.

“I’m fine,” I said automatically.

“Bullshit, you’re not fine.” She stopped just short of touching me, hands hovering like she wanted to check everything but didn’t know where to start. “Tell me what happened.”

That was the last thing I planned on doing.

I shrugged with my good shoulder. “It’s nothing. I just… caught a bad step.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You ‘caught a bad step’ into someone’s fist?”

I didn’t answer.

Something in her face shuttered a little. Not completely. Just enough for me to feel it.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “You don’t want to tell me. Got it.”

The distance in her voice sliced right through my already busted ribs. I deserved it. Hell, I’d been trying to push her away for days. But wanting distance in theory and seeing her actually step back from me were two very different things.

“Chloe, wait,” I said. “Can we… sit? I need to talk. Just—would you listen?”

She folded her arms, and for a second I thought she was going to say no.

Then she exhaled and nodded once. “Fine. I’ll listen.”

I led the way to the couch, moving more carefully than I wanted her to notice. We sat at opposite ends, the space between us was huge and small at the same time.

Up close, I could see the faint shadows under her eyes. The ink smudge along the side of her hand. The way her fingers picked at a loose thread on a cushion before she stilled them by force.

“You stopped calling,” she said before I could start. “For a week. Then I show up, and you’re bruised and bleeding, and you won’t tell me why. I don’t know what to do with that, Zarek.”

God, I was a stupid mess.

“I know,” I said. My voice came out rough. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Chloe. None of this is on you.”

Her laugh was short and humorless. “Right. I just moved out. That’s all.”

“You moved out because you were drowning,” I said. “And because I was dragging you under with me.”