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Turning away from me, Sutton trudged into her bedroom. She moved like a ghost, silent and insubstantial.

As I lifted the phone to my ear to talk to Mindy, I watched her go. Something vital inside me withered and died. I had done it. I saved her. I protected her from the monster, and all it cost me was everything.

I was the frame again. Empty. Rigid. Alone.

Chapter Twenty-Five

SUTTON

The metallic rasp of the zipper closing on my duffel bag sounded less like packing and more like the sealing of a body bag. The sharp, final noise sliced through the heavy silence of the bedroom, marking the exact moment where Sutton and Ben ceased to exist and Sutton Vale resumed her regularly scheduled programming.

I stood by the bed, my hands gripping the canvas straps of the bag Brenna had brought. I wasn’t crying. Tears felt too soft for the cold, jagged rage currently expanding in my chest and filling the spaces where hope had been only an hour ago. Ben hadn’t just broken up with me or rejected me. He had invalidated me. By making the decision for me, by deciding that he knew what was best for my safety and my future, he had aligned himself with the very men I had spent my entire life trying to escape. He thought he was being noble, but the only emotion I experienced was hurt.

I scanned the room one last time, checking for anything I might have missed. The room was messy except for the neatly made bed, still unused because we’d spent the night in his. My eyes landed on a pile of fabric on the floor near the closet. It was one of Ben’s shirts. I walked over and picked it up. The cotton was soft, worn thin by years of washing, and when I brought it to my face, the scent hit me full force.

Not my scent.

The shirt smelled of cedar, laundry detergent, and the specific, musky warmth of Ben’s skin. For a second, my resolve wavered. I wanted to stuff it into my bag, to take it with me as a talisman to sleep with. I wanted a piece of the sanctuary to hold onto while the wolves tore at me.

Then I remembered his face in the kitchen, and the flat, dead look in his eyes when he told me he wanted his life back.

I dropped the shirt, and it landed in a heap on the floor. If Ben wanted me gone, he could clean up the memory of me himself. I wasn’t going to make it easy for him. I wasn’t going to take a souvenir from a man who thought I was too weak to handle his past. He wanted his quiet life back? Fine. He could have it. He could have the silence, the empty house, and the ghost of me haunting every corner until he choked on it.

Slinging the duffel bag over my shoulder, the canvas strap bit into my collarbone. My fingers drifted upward on autopilot, seeking the familiar comfort of the gold oval resting at the base of my throat. The metal held the heat of my skin.

Ben had rescued this exact piece of jewelry from the floor of his ambulance. Driving back in a tropical downpour, he had returned it simply because he thought it would matter to me. That gesture was the first brick in our foundation of trust. It marked the first sign he saw a desperate, scared woman instead of a problem to be managed. But the woman who needed that kind of saving didn’t exist anymore. Despite the events of the past hour, I had grown a lot over the past week. My grandmother gave me this necklace to remind me of my roots. Taking it back to Los Angeles meant dragging the ghost of this cottage into a warzone. Vulnerability had no place where I was going.

I unclasped the chain, and the gold links slid through my fingers like water. I crossed the room and let the jewelry pool on the dark wood of the nightstand. The etched metal glinted in a narrow shaft of sunlight filtering through the shutters. A small notepad and pen sat near the base of the lamp. Driven by cold fury, I grabbed the pen. I scribbled a single line across the top page.

I won’t need you to return it this time.

Tearing the sheet free, I set the paper next to the gold chain. After readjusting the strap of the duffel bag on my shoulder, I marched out the bedroom door without a backward glance. I refused to leave a piece of my heart in that room. I took it all with me, even the parts that were bleeding. The hallway looked longer than it had when I arrived. The air conditioning hummed its monotonous tune, trying to cool a house that was now feverish with tension. I walked past the bathroom where I’d been pressed against the wall just yesterday, past the linen closet where he kept the towels that smelled like home.

I stopped in the kitchen. I couldn’t help it. This was the heart of it, where I had learned to operate a simple coffee pot. This was where we had chopped garlic, his chest pressed against my back, his hands guiding mine. This was where he had washed my hair in the sink, his fingers reverent and gentle, washing away the shame until I was clean again.

The ghosts of us were everywhere. The phantom of Ben leaned against the counter, drinking a beer. The shadow of myself sat at the small table, eating pasta and feeling seen. The kitchen appeared dead now, like a stage set after the actors had gone home and the lights had been killed. The appliances were just metal and plastic. The counter was just stone. The magic had drained out of the space, siphoned off by his fear.

He held the structure together, he said. But standing there in the silence, I realized he had protected the structure so fiercely he had evicted the life from inside it. I turned away from the kitchen, my throat tight, and walked to the back door. I turned the knob and the mechanism turned with a smooth, well-oiled slide—Ben fixed everything, after all.

After I pushed the door open, the humidity hit me instantly, a wall of wet, heavy heat that smelled of drying mud and salt water. The storm had passed, leaving the island scoured and bright, but the air was still thick and pregnant with the pressure of everything left unsaid. The helicopters were blessedly silent at the moment and I didn’t see any paparazzi lurking here in the back.

I stepped out onto the back porch. A black SUV was barely visible at the overgrown lane near the dock, idling with a low rumble. It was a massive vehicle, an Escalade with tinted windows so dark they looked like oil slicks. It was spotless, sleek, and utterly out of place on the gravel and dirt road.

It was the transport Mindy and Ben had arranged.

Ben stood on the porch, leaning against the support post nearest the stairs. He had changed into jeans and a dark shirt. He had put his boots on and was fully armored again, the casual intimacy of last night erased as if it had never happened. His arms were crossed over his chest, his biceps flexing as he gripped his own elbows. He wasn’t staring at the car. He was scanning the treeline, his jaw set in a line of granite.

I caught echoes of the man in the mugshot in his posture—not violent now, but impenetrable. Walled off. A fortress with the drawbridge raised and the moat filled with oil. I stopped a few feet away from him and adjusted the strap of my bag, waiting. I waited for him to turn his head. For him to break. For him to say Wait or Stay or Don’t go.

He didn’t move. He didn’t even blink. He breathed in a slow, controlled rhythm, his chest rising and falling with mechanical precision. He was committing to the lie with everything he had. He was going to let me walk down those stairs and get into that car without giving me a single inch of the man I was falling in love with.

Anger flared and burned away the last of my hesitation. "I’m leaving." My voice was steady and hard as a diamond.

He flinched. It was a small movement, a tightening of the muscles around his eyes, a twitch in his cheek, the smallest crack. He wasn’t a statue. He was a man holding himself so still he was vibrating with the effort. But he still didn’t speak, refusing to give me the satisfaction of a response.

"You think you’re saving me." I stepped closer, needing to make sure he heard every syllable. "You think you’re being the hero by sending me away. But you’re not. You’re just another man who was too scared to let me be strong."

I waited for a reaction. Nothing.