The words feel too small, too clean for the filth she endured. But it’s not the time to crack open comparisons to my own past—I know that urge well. She doesn’t need my trauma tangled in hers right now. She just needs to know she’s not alone.
“You didn’t deserve any of it. And I swear to you—I’m going to make this right. You’ll never have to see any of them again. I’ll make sure they’re gone. All of them.”
She blinks, wary, her voice a thread of hesitation. “What, you mean… as in?”
She doesn’t finish, but she doesn’t need to. She knows exactly what I mean. And she’s not afraid of it. Not anymore.
It helped me heal when I made my father disappear—for the things he did to me. That particular brand of justice, messy and permanent, pulled something rotten out of my chest.
And maybe it’ll do the same for her.
“I think I love you, stalker boy,” she says, like it’s nothing. Like she hasn’t just tossed a live wire between us.
It’s casual and careless, almost as chaotic as she once was.
But it’s the kind of truth that’s been hanging between us ever since she came home—thick, silent, impossible to ignore.
I don’t just love her.
I’m consumed by her.
Every fractured glance, every graze of skin, every breath that reminds me she survived—it’s all mine now. And I’m never letting go.
She’s fire in the wreckage. And I’m done pretending I could ever walk away from her again.
51
Nell
He’s gone, and the house is too quiet.
Talia’s here, but she barely speaks to me. She’s either glued to her phone or barking commands down the line at someone I’ll never see. She’s presence without presence. White noise in combat boots.
I can handle one night.
I think.
Knowing Cam’s out there—risking everything, trading masks, charm and fury just to chase justice for me—folds my chest in on itself. He says it’s about more than just me now, and I believe him. We’ve both got skin in the game. Flesh. Blood. Scar tissue. And the longer I sit here, in this pristine shell of a house, the more that anger churns, festering under my skin—starting with my uncle, ending with the bastard who took Lea.
I’ve imagined all their deaths.
Replayed the endings over and over, fifty thousand times in my head—each one sharper than the last.
It helps. More than therapy ever could.
And knowing Cam thinks the same way? That he sees what I see when he closes his eyes? That just confirms what I’ve known since the moment he pulled me out—I belong to him, and he belongs to me. No fairy tales. Just fire and loyalty and vengeance.
But I’m not going to be the girl who waits in the dark while the war rages. Not anymore.
Tonight, I train.
I’ve watched Cam in the gym more times than I care to admit—creeping on him like some lovesick shadow. Sparring with Talia. Slamming fists into that body opponent bag shaped like a man. Each hit precise, vicious, deliberate.
I can do that.
Iwilldo that.
Because I’m done being helpless.
