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He breathes me in, trailing his nose through my hair and toward my cheek. “I almost lost you,” he admits.

“I almost lost you, too.”

“Fuck, Gillian, we both know you have two backups if anything happens to me.”

My fingers clench in the fabric of his shirt. “I’m not laughing. That’s a terrible joke.”

He’s not laughing either, thankfully. Finally he takes my face in his hands to study me. “Are you okay? Really okay?”

When had it happened? I wonder when I fell for Soren, too. Somewhere in the middle of hatred, love bloomed, strong and pure and forgiving.

“Areyou?” I throw back. “I’m so worried about you.”

His laugh is dry and bitter. “Me? Don’t worry about me. I did fucking nothing. I didn’t help you. Icouldn’thelp you.”

Ah, that’s where his stiffness comes from. The disgust in his voice isn’t for me this time. It’s for himself.

“You did what you could,” I insist.

He shakes his head, turning away. “If Tase hadn’t shown up when he?—”

“Stop.” I dig my fingers into his shoulders. “Did you want to impale yourself on the end of a madman’s knife?”

The idea terrifies me in a way I never thought possible. I swallow hard, the rock in my throat barbed and burning.

“You have no idea what it did to me, to see the three of you in danger.”

Soren drops his forehead to mine and the tips of our noses touch. “I’m more worried about you. It fucking killed me to not be able to help you.”

“You helped enough.”

“No.” His breathing is harsh. “I didn’t. When the chips were down, I did nothing. I put you in danger thinking I’d be able to stop this guy and not knowing what I was up against. It’s my fault. I had to watch you strip for those pieces of shit.”

“Are you going to beat yourself up for the rest of the night? Or will this be something we have to deal with going forward?”

The anger is for me as much as for him. I brought trouble to their doorstep.

And when certain things come to light, the fallout will be anything but pretty. The shiver starts at the base of my spine and wracks through me.

“We came way too close to dying. If I’d lost you, if Aiden hadn’t managed to grab that gun, or if Tase hadn’t shown up when he did… There are too many things that could have gone wrong. Horribly wrong. Then we’d have an entirely different outcome tonight.”

“It doesn’t pay to think about those things.” My voice trembles.

He huffs out another laugh and squeezes me closer. “But that’sallI think about. I don’t want to lose any of you. Everyone I actually care about was in that cabin with a madman and his gun. His knife. His baseball bat.”

Soren needs to get this out. Which is why, no matter how hard it is to bite my tongue, I stay quiet and let him finish.

“I never hated you, Gillian,” he continues softly. “I’ve always been better at letting my body do the talking. Words, emotions, they’re tough for me and not something I’ve been good at.”

“No one is,” I reply.

“I never hated you, because you aren’t your mother. And it’s not just her fault, what happened to my own mother. It’s my father’s fault too. They both share the responsibility equally. The rest of us had no choice. But you…you’re different.”

Shit, now is the absolute wrong time for tears. I’ve cried enough, haven’t I? Except they RSVP’d to the party and there’s no stopping them now.

“I never wanted to be different.”

Soren shifts to cup my face in his massive hands. His thumbs stroke my skin. “None of us ask for it, but here we are. I see you, Gilli. I see the pieces of you you’d rather hide,and I see how you hate and love yourself. I see your vulnerability when you don’t want anyone else to look that closely at you.”