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Ryker killed the engine, but Marcus didn’t move. He just sat there, staring through the windshield, his chest rising and falling in slow, controlled breaths, like he was still trying to claw his way back from the edge.
Ryker got out first, leaving us alone.
I reached out, my fingers brushing Marcus’s forearm, and finally—finally—he looked at me.
“What you did back there,” I said softly. “It won’t bring Diego back.”
His nostrils flared. “I know that.”
“But you wanted it to.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw.
I trailed my fingers down his arm, lacing them through his, feeling the tension under his skin, the raw,unspent violence still coiled tight in his muscles. “Let me try this my way.”
He didn’t pull away, but he didn’t relax.
I swallowed, my voice quieter now. “You know, it wouldn’t have brought Jason back either.”
Marcus stiffened. His grip on my fingers turned rigid, not tight, not crushing, but suddenly still, like the weight of that name had frozen him.
Jason Lawson. His friend. His brother-in-arms. A man who had fought beside him, bled beside him, and never made it home. I didn’t know all the details, but I knew enough—Jason had been taken from him, just like Diego had been taken from me.
And then there was Byron Dane.
I didn’t say his name, but I didn’t have to. It was there, a specter between us, filling the space that grief always left behind. Marcus had lost his father, lost Jason, and now, he was grasping at vengeance like it was the only thing keeping him standing.
But it wouldn’t bring them back. Not Jason, not Byron, not Diego.
Loss didn’t work like that.
It hollowed you out, carved you from the inside until you were just remnants of the person you used to be. And the worst part? The world didn’t care. It kept spinning, kept moving forward, while you were stuck—trapped in the moment they took their last breath, reliving it, rewriting it, trying to imagine some version where you could have stopped it.
I knew that feeling. I was drowning in it.
And so was he.
I squeezed his hand, my voice softer now, careful. “Marcus.”
His gaze flicked to mine, dark and unreadable, but Isaw it. The fracture in his control, the quiet, brutal grief clawing at him from the inside.
“I need you,” I whispered. “Not like that. Not lost in this.”
He exhaled sharply, running his free hand over his face, like he was trying to wipe something away. His fingers tightened around mine, grounding himself. Grounding us both.
“Let me try,” I said again, firmer this time. “Please.”
For a long, agonizing moment, he didn’t answer. Then, finally, his shoulders slumped, just slightly, just enough.
“All right,” he muttered. “We do this your way.”
I let out a slow breath, my fingers still tangled with his. It wasn’t a victory. Not really.
But it was a start.
His fingers tightened around mine. He exhaled slowly. “Tell me what you need.”
That was Marcus. He didn’t try to talk me out of it. Didn’t argue, didn’t dismiss me. He just looked at me with those calculating eyes and waited for me to tell him what to burn.