“How do you not get it?” he rasps. “How the fuck do you not get it by now, Ayla? You didn’t just save Marcus’s life the night you took those bullets for him. You saved mine. You saved Theo’s.”
I blink up at him, completely thrown off balance. “What do you mean? The gun was aimed at Marcus. The bullets—”
“I’m not talking about the gun.” He shakes his head, his gaze never leaving mine. “I’m not talking about the bullets.”
“Then what—”
My words break off as I realize exactly what he means. He’s talking about this.
About the grief that’s eating through his soul like acid.
About having to go to a wake for one of his best friends.
About losing himself under a tidal wave of pain.
My stomach tightens. A small noise escapes my mouth, and I shake my head. “But I didn’t save you this time. I didn’t save him.”
Tears sting my eyes like shards of glass. It’s the first time I’ve spoken those words out loud, but as I say them, regret rises up inside me. I twist my arm out of Ryland’s hold and step back, my skin going cold.
“It should’ve been me. If Marcus just would’ve let me—”
Ryland doesn’t even let me finish. He moves into my space again, towering over me as he growls, “Don’t fucking say that.”
He looks furious. Unhinged, almost. The same way he looked at Doctor Adelman’s office when his bottled-up emotions exploded out of him.
“You don’t wish it had been me?” I challenge, lifting my chin. It’s a cruel question to ask, I know that. It’s going to hurt him or me or both of us, but I can’t stop myself. “I did it once. Why not a second time? Don’t you wish it’d been me who got shot instead of Marcus? Because I sure as fuck do.”
Ryland’s face freezes, his expression turning to stone. “Don’t ask me that. You can’t fucking ask me that.”
“Why not?” I blurt.
I’m on the verge of crying again. I’ve never felt so emotionally unhinged in my life as I have during the past week, not even after the first time my foster father raped me. Not even after I woke up in the hospit
al to learn that I’d lost my arm.
Ryland drags in a shuddering breath, his nostrils flickering. “Because you can’t ask me to choose between two things I love.”
The kitchen around us seems to fade away as I blink at him in shock.
There’s not a hint of a lie on his face as he glares down at me. Just anger and pain and… truth.
It’s too much. I should laugh in his face and tell him he has to be mistaken. That he can’t possibly love me when he’s only known me for a little over a month. That the years he and his friends spent hiding in the shadows of my life don’t count, and that this is his grief talking, or his obsession, or his lust.
But I don’t say any of that. I can’t. My traitorous fucking heart won’t let me.
Because it doesn’t care what logic says. It doesn’t care that this is insane.
It cares about Ryland.
It cares about Marcus.
It cares about Theo.
Maybe a tiny part of me, the part that’s been hurt over and over again and expects nothing else anymore, hoped that forcing Ryland’s hand would make him admit he doesn’t care about me. That he sees me as a useful tool, a human shield who kept his friend safe once, and nothing more.
I wanted him to push me away so I could run without feeling like a coward.
But he didn’t.