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That war raging inside her flared hotter the moment he turned back, jaw taut. “Quinn.”
She dragged her gaze up. His eyes burned with a truth so fierce it was almost unbearable, honesty laced with longing, and just beneath it, the shadow of desperation. Her stomach clenched painfully. This man was more than she’d ever let herself see. She’d used her anger to blind herself, but now it was all laid bare.
Suddenly, she needed air, space, anything. Her chest felt too tight. “I have to get dressed,” she muttered, hugging the towel. She pushed past him, intending to reach her bedroom. But his hand on her arm stopped her in place.
“You don’t get to shut me out again,” he said quietly.
A tremor worked through her. "Let go."
But her voice wavered, thin and splintered because somewhere inside, a part of her wanted the opposite. Wanted him to hold on. To hold her together.
His grip didn’t loosen. Not yet. He searched her face, eyes burning with something fierce, something unshakable. "That’s not what you want."
She flinched. “Don’t tell me what I want.”
His jaw flexed, but he didn’t rise to the fight. Instead, his voice dropped lower, rougher, hitting deeper than she was ready for. “Then say it. Say you don’t want me.”
The air between them crackled, charged and suffocating. She couldn’t refute it. She’d just proven to him how much she wanted him. He saw too much. Saw that this wasn’t just about him.
He let go then, but not like she’d asked. Not like she’d won. He did it slowly, deliberately, his fingers trailing away like he could still feel her, like he knew she could still feel him.
When he finally spoke, it wasn’t about them. It was about the one thing she wasn’t ready to face.
“You’re the one who has to let go, Quinn.”
She didn’t have to ask what he meant. Brian. The ghost between them. The man she’d spent years mourning, years blaming, years using as a shield between her and the very thing she felt with Dagger right now.
Her chest squeezed so tight she couldn’t breathe. She wasn’t ready for this. For him. For any of it.
She shot him a glare, but it lacked heat. "You think I haven’t tried?" Her voice broke, thin and shaking. "You think I haven’t done everything I can to move on?"
"No, I don’t," he said, eyes hard. "Because you haven’t. You drank to forget. You blamed me to survive. You called it grief,but it was hiding. You never faced what losing him actually meant, you buried yourself in guilt and called it love."
The tension radiating from him didn’t abate. "We’ve moved beyond hiding, beyond deflecting, beyond running."
"Then what do you want, Kade? To force me into a confession? A vow? For God’s sake, Brian hasn’t even—" Her breath seized, tears threatening to blur her vision. "He hasn’t been gone that long, and I—I slept with you."
"He’s been gone a long time, Quinn. But you’ve kept him alive by pretending your grief means you loved him enough. It doesn’t. You didn’t mourn him, you made him a barrier so you’d never have to feel the truth."
She flinched like he’d struck her, blood pounding in her ears. "Don’t talk about him like that."
"Why? Because it’s disrespectful? Or because it forces you to see he wasn’t the man you keep pretending he was?"
Her nails bit into her palms. "That’s not fair."
"No. What’s not fair is what you’ve done to yourself. You’re punishing yourself for surviving. You’ve been punishing me for standing beside you when no one else did."
She sucked in a breath, tears prickling. "Stop it."
"No." His chest rose and fell with each ragged breath. "We both need to let him go, Quinn. We have a right to…live. We didn’t die that day…he did."
Her grief and rage twisted into one unrecognizable knot. She slammed her palm against the counter, rattling a small stack of toiletries. "You think it’s that easy?" she nearly shouted, voice raw. "To just decide I’m allowed to be happy? That I can choose you over my husband’s memory without feeling like a monster?"
His jaw clenched, knuckles whitening at his sides. "Brian’s memory is one thing. But you’re shackled to guilt and anger. It’s strangling you, and us. I’m done playing scapegoat."
That struck a tender nerve, and she felt a rush of defensive heat surge up her spine. "You’re the one who put yourself in that role. You kept hovering, trying to save me from myself!
"Because you were drowning," he shot back, voice rising. "Every time I tried to pull you out, you slapped me away. Do you know how that felt? Like I was paying for loving you. Like I was some dirty secret?—"