Page 141 of Crave

Gabe exhaled slowly, his jaw tightening just enough to show that it had hit him too.

I stared at her.

Stared through her.

I pushed from the edge of the bathtub, my body swaying. Pain ripped through my side, but it was nothing compared to the fire tearing through my chest.

I must’ve misheard her.

“You fucking what?”

The words were slow and deliberate, like my brain was trying to process them before they could destroy me.

Our sister wrapped her arms around herself. A pathetic attempt at protection. There was no protecting herself now.

“I was there that night,” she said, voice barely more than a breath. “I saw them as they begged. As they fought. As they—” She squeezed her eyes shut. “As they were murdered.”

The sound of Theo’s fist slamming into the wall was deafening. He let out a sharp, jagged breath, his forehead dropping against his forearm. His entire body shook with something uncontainable.

Jude was motionless, his hands open at his sides, like he didn’t know whether to lash out or collapse.

Gabe…

Gabe was staring at her like she was a puzzle he couldn’t solve.

No one spoke.

No one fucking breathed.

I felt it creeping in—the cold realisation that nothing we thought we knew was real.

That she had been there all along.

That while we were searching for answers, losing our goddamn minds, spilling blood for revenge—she’d already known it all.

“You let us waste all this fucking time hunting ghosts,” Jude said, voice hoarse. “You let us?—”

His voice broke off.

He ran a hand down his face, then turned away so we couldn’t see whatever expression had just flashed across it.

The things we’d done in the wake of their death. The fucking Hell we’d unleashed on anyone we even suspected had a hand in their death was fucking sickening.

“I didn’t tell you because I?—”

“Shut up.”

My voice was quieter than I expected.

But it cut through her words like a knife.

Theo moved.

His entire body went rigid, his chest rising and falling with uneven, jagged breaths before he suddenly spun toward the counter. His hand swiped across it in one brutal motion, sending everything on top of it crashing to the floor.

Bottles of antiseptic shattered. The first aid kit burst open, gauze and needles scattering across the tiles.

The violence of it shook the air.