“Me, too.” He squeezed me so hard it hurt, but I didn’t complain. Some part of me knew there was a good chance I’d never see Jace again.

I let him go and tightened my towel. Jace looked at Marc over my head, and I followed his gaze. Marc’s jaw was tight, his stance tense. But his hands hung loose at his sides. He wasn’t pleased by the hug, but wasn’t going to deny either of us a goodbye. Not under the circumstances. Not that he could have stopped it.

“Play it smart, Hammond,” Marc said at last.

Jace nodded and held his gaze. “Take care of her.” Neither of them looked at me; they were too busy staring at each other, each sizing the other up. Or maybe warning him.

“You know I will. If she’ll let me.”

Jace gave a short laugh, then looked at me, one hand on the doorknob. “Let him.”

I nodded. Then he was gone.

Tears stood in my eyes, and a huge lump had formed in my throat.

“Eat something,” Marc said, and I realized I was still staring at the door.

I started to argue—I was more nauseated from exertion than hungry—then realized I’d just said I’d let him take care of me. So I sat at the table as he unwrapped another biscuit. There was no microwave, so I ate it cold, while Marc avoided my eyes from the other side of the table.

“Marc?” I asked when I was finished, wadding my wrapper awkwardly in one hand. His silence could not be good.

He finally looked up, watching me in equal parts fear, anger, and grief. “He loves you.”

I closed my eyes and counted to five, then forced them open again. Made myself meet his gaze. “I know.”

Marc shook his head, his brows drawn low. “I mean, he really loves you. It’s not just some instinctive need to possess the tabby, now that he’s coming into his potential. He’s in love with you.”

“I know.” My throat wanted to close around my next breath. “Could you please stop saying it?”

“When were you going to tell me?”

My heart ached. My eyes stung with unshed tears. My throat burned from holding back words that needed to be said. “What was I supposed to say? You already knew. You beat the shit out of him for it.”

“No.” He stood and stomped away from me until he got to the wall, then turned abruptly, anger flashing behind the gold specks in his eyes now. “I beat the shit out of him for being careless. It’s his fault Miguel got to you.”

I could have argued that point all day, but we’d honestly already beat it to death, so I kept my mouth shut.

“I knew he had a crush. A stupid, little boy’s crush on the unattainable. But this is different, Faythe. This is dangerous.” He rubbed his forehead as if he was fending off a headache. “Does your dad know?” Then, before I could answer. “He knows.”

I shook my head, but Marc ignored me. “That’s why he sent him. Sent both of us. He knows we’d die to protect you.”

“I don’t want that.” My tears finally overflowed, and I wiped my cheeks with my scarred left arm.

Marc watched me, and I saw the very moment when his expression went unreadable. He’d closed me out and the room was colder from his silence.

We couldn’t go on like this. I had to tell him as soon as Kaci was safe—assuming we survived the next day…

Twenty-Six

The sun was warm, but the northern wind was cold and bitter, even on the short walk to the rental car. During my last Shift, Marc had scrubbed blood from my jacket so the scent wouldn’t attract unwanted attention, but that left my sleeve damp and my arm cold.

As Marc drove, my thoughts raced, circling the risks we were taking like buzzards around a fresh kill. If anyone spotted us, we were dead. We were deep inside enemy territory, and both sides had long since dropped any pretense of polite politics or manners. Jace’s mother seemed to be the only one still clinging to such fragile reassurances, and I think that was solely the product of her own denial. She could not believe that her husband would order one of their sons to kill the other. And if she couldn’t face the truth about Brett’s death, she couldn’t possibly understand what Jace was risking by coming to visit.

Even if he wasn’t really making a social call.

I held Marc’s backpack on my lap, fingering Jace’s duct tape through the thick material. I was already wearing the brace on my right wrist, and it smelled like him, just because he’d taken it out of the package for me. The rest of the car smelled like Marc, and like the unseen traces of my own blood, still lingering in the backseat.

Neither of us spoke. We’d both said so much already, and the confession I still held inside was so staggeringly awful that I could hardly grasp the consequences of voicing it. Yet keeping my secret was unbearable. It had turned to acid in my gut and was surely consuming me from the inside out.

Did Jace feel the same? He must. He’d wanted me to tell Marc all along—had been waiting on me to find the right time and place.

But there was no right time, and certainly no right place. As badly as it hurt to keep quiet, I was starting to believe that we could never tell Marc what had happened. Not because he might leave me. Not because he’d probably hate me. Not even because of what it would do to the Pride.

If I told Marc, he and Jace would fight, and one of them would die.

My mind refused to move beyond that certainty. I couldn’t entertain the idea of an “after,” and wasn’t even sure there would be one. So the Confession remained a hulking, dark cloud on my mind’s horizon, a distant goal I was afraid I might never actually meet.