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Everything will be okay.

You didn’t notice three years ago. You didn’t notice her pain once in the last three years.

Everything will be okay.

You let her down. You let her hurt. Just like Rhys. Just like your father. Just like—

Everything will be okay.

Nothing will ever be okay again. You did your routines and followed your rules and it still wasn’t enough. You’re the broken one who is damaging everything and everyone in his path.

Everything will—

You know what you’ve done. You let them down. You always let them down.

I don’t remember how I got to bed or what I did for the hour before, but I fall asleep with Paloma curled into my side and Seven in the crook of her bent legs, his head resting up on her thigh.

And the thoughts never leave me.

Chapter 75

NOW

Paloma

Seven is whining.

Something is wrong—enough that I jolt awake and curse as I check the time on my phone just inches from my fingers.

Shit. It’s nearly eight—Bennett’s slept in.

And is still sleeping. Seven whines and paws at him as he rests on his back, twitching every now and then, skin flushed.

Things have seemed off for a month or so now, but more than usual in the last several days. At first, I’d blamed myself for disrupting his usual routines he so carefully follows.

Were it only the last two days, I’d put it all down to a mix of guilt, anger, and stress over everything. But it wasn’t. I know—something is wrong.

I’ve developed a sixth sense when it comes to Bennett Reiner, over three years of desperately watching him in hidden moments and more public ones, letting the hockey team boys flirt with me if it meant I had even a second in his intoxicating presence.

“Bennett.” I shake his shoulders until his eyes blink slowly awake. He stares at me like I’m some holy being, his hand reaching to cup my cheek.

“S’good dream,” he mutters, eyes slowly closing as he tries to trap me to his chest.

“No, Bennett. You’ve gotta wake up. You overslept.”

His body tenses beneath me. “What?”

“It’s eight. You’ve got to be on the team bus in, like, an hour?”

He jolts up after that, leaving his side of the bed messy. I try to ask what I can do to help, but he ignores me and murmurs under his breath as he strips naked in the light of his walk-in closet.

He comes out in suit pants, a button-up, and a suit jacket, grabbing a belt off the hooks on his wall—a belt that’s been wrapped around my wrists once or twice—and sliding it on as well.

For a moment, it’s as if I’m not in the room, like he’s forgotten I’m there entirely.

“Bennett?”

He startles. Seven sits on his feet as he straightens out the collar of the navy jacket.