Rhett:
The moment her door shuts behind us, I’m choking on the silence.
Her perfume lingers, faint and sweet, threaded with something darker—the copper tang of what just happened. My throat still feels raw, scraped from where her power crushed the air out of me.
I should be furious.
I am furious.
But it isn’t at her.
It’s at myself—at my weakness, at the way I couldn’t protect her when it mattered, at the way my veins bent to her like I was nothing more than prey.
I pace the edge of her room like a caged animal, shoulders tight, fists aching to hit something. Every time my eyes flick toward her, curled on the bed with her knees to her chest, I feel the anger dissolve into something worse—something like pity. Something like longing.
I can’t decide what’s worse.
“You should’ve told
