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A nauseating wave rolls through me.

‘No … no, she would’ve said something. This can’t be true.’

But even as the words leave my mouth, they’re without conviction. Memories flash through my mind: Isla’s change in behaviour, the way she avoided touch, her anger, the resentment, the questions she asked me that I never understood. All the small things I dismissed, filing them away as moods, as phases, as anything but this. All that time, she needed me, and I was there, but not really at all.

‘How did I not see it?’ I whisper. I press a hand to my mouth, as if to stem the bile threatening to climb up my throat. ‘I was right there. I was right there and I had no idea—’ My voice fractures. ‘I thought she was just going through something. I never expected this.’ All-consuming guilt claws at me, suffocating me.

‘She was living with that, and I was blinded by my own problems. God, I didn’t try hard enough.’ I shake my head and back away from the thought, from him, from all of it, but there’s nowhere to go.

‘I should’ve known,’ I say, quieter now. ‘I should’ve done something.’

‘You couldn’t have known,’ he says. ‘These things are often very well hidden. That’s how men like him get away with it.’

‘So you decided to murder him?’

‘I decided to stop him.’

‘That’s not the same thing!’

‘It is when no one else was going to.’

‘This is completely insane. You don’t get to decide who lives and dies because you think you’re protecting me.’

His gaze locks onto mine. ‘The lines don’t exist when it comes to you. I’ll cross every one of them, Bryn, because you’re mine, and I won’t let anything touch you.’

There it is: the devotion, now twisting into something I never expected, something harmful.

‘I never asked for that.’

‘You didn’t have to.’

‘That’s the problem. You decided this. You act on impulse and emotion, and then you stand here like you did something good, like you didn’t murder a man.’

‘Impulse?’ His mouth twitches faintly. ‘No. I gave it a great deal of thought.’

‘So this wasn’t an act of irrationality. That’s supposed to comfort me?’

He blinks, his face remaining impassive.

‘Do you hear yourself? Do you hear the words coming out of your mouth?’

‘I was protecting you.’

‘I know,’ I whisper. ‘That’s what scares me.’

There’s a long silence as we stare at each other. My heart is pounding. He looks far too calm.

‘Look, I know how this sounds,’ he says. ‘I know it sounds crazy—’

‘Because it is.’

‘Isla knew. She knew what he was and what would happen after she left that house. What he’d turn his attention to. Who he’d start watching. She asked me to do this. For you. For her.’

‘She wouldn’t—’ The words die on my lips. All at once, it starts to line up. I remember the way Grant hovered around her, seemingly always on edge, the tension in his shoulders whenever her name came up. He was controlling of Isla in a way he wasn’t of me. I think of her behaviour. The silence. The distance between us.

‘Why didn’t he go to your room first?’ she once asked me, and at the time, I was so consumed with Ash, I didn’t consider that she might have been talking about someone else. Someone under our own roof. Someone who was supposed to keep us safe.

It hits me hard enough I have to steady myself, bracing my hand against the edge of the table as the weight of it crashes down. It’s true. A sick, hollow feeling opens in my chest.