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“Why?” she demands, her voice cold, as rigid as her hand in my lap.

“We both know this isn’t going to work. Why do you want me to rip myself open again for you?

Just so you can watch me bleed?” She tries to yank her hand away, but I grip it tighter, my jaw ticking, my eyes darting to the cuts on her arm.

“Has he hurt you?” I know she’s deflecting. I know she’s not mad at me. Or maybe she is, but she’s hurting. Because of him. “I swear to God, I’ll fucking kill him?—”

“Stop, Cortland.”

“No. I’m not gonna stop, not until you use your words.” I’m seeing red and I should probably pull over, but I don’t want to because if I do, I might turn this car around and find Silas and rip his goddamn throat out.

“Cortland.” Her voice is so quiet.

I take a breath, in. Out. I run my tongue over my teeth, her hand beneath mine. “Remember what happened the last time you didn’t speak, Remi?” I keep my tone low, my eyes on the road. “That didn’t work out so well for you, huh?”

“Stop it!” She screams those words at the top of her lungs, smacking her free hand on the dash, trying to jerk away from me again. “You are such an asshole!” I tighten my grip on her, my palm sweaty. “You don’t get to demand whatever you want and think I’ll just give it to you, just like that.”

I huff a laugh, irritation working its way through my veins. “And you don’t get to keep your mouth shut and expect people to read your fucking mind.”

She rips her hand from mine and this time I let her go, my heart racing. “You have no idea what it was like.”

“Then why don’t you tell me?”

“You couldn’t possibly understand what it feels like to be that powerless.” Her words are barely more than a whisper.

I think about my mom screaming at me. My brother. My dad. Her dominance wielded over our entire house with a heavy hand. “Try me, Remi.”

“You just get everything you want, don’t you, Cortland?

Girls? Money? A clean record? Is that why you waited, in high school?

You asked me out so you could fuck me over during the summer, head off to college and forget all about me?

You wanted to hurt me all along, at just the right time, so you could let my heart break into pieces while you fucking ran?

” She snarls those words out, and I grip the steering wheel tighter.

But I don’t speak. I want to reach for a cigarette and my lighter, but my hands are already shaky, and I don’t think I could keep the truck on the road if I did that. She has no idea what she’s talking about.

She has no fucking idea.

“You just thought I was so shy and so quiet and I’d just let it all go? You hunted me down, offered me up to your friends in those woods and thought I’d go home and cry into my pillow and that would all be that?—”

“Stop talking, Remi.”

She slams her fists on the dash. “You just bitched at me for not speaking and now that I am, you can’t handle it.”

I breathe in. Out. Again. Stare at the gray skies ahead, the empty road.

“You’re so good at wrecking shit, Cortland, but you can’t stand to see the damage when you’re done. Is that it? Why are you even here, anyway? You just want to watch me burn all over again? It wasn’t enough for you after graduation?”

I’m off the highway, pulling into the dirt path to Lilith Cave National Park, and I throw the truck into park as soon as I back into a spot in the lot, turning to glare at her.

She has her arms wrapped around her chest.

“You got daddy issues, Remi? Is that what this is all about?”

Her cheeks flush pink, and she grits her teeth, glaring at me.

If she’d had a good dad, would things have been different? She was so easy to get to. She sat on my lap, let me touch her, trail my fingers up her arm. And in the woods, she was so giddy.

Until I pushed her against that tree.

My mouth hot on hers.

And Chase and Brinklin, circling us.

Storm watching.

I was supposed to protect her. I fucking failed.

“Is it me you’re mad at, or him?”

“Don’t do this,” she whispers.

“You know why I waited, Remi?” I ask her, undoing my seatbelt and turning to face her more fully, snatching up the lighter and a cigarette as I do.

She looks down at her thighs. I take in the curve of her cheekbone as I light up, the narrowness of her nose.

Her long lashes, and how my shirt swamps her, but she’s still so fucking beautiful.

I turn my head and exhale, tossing down the lighter.

I keep staring out my cracked window as I start to speak again.

“I waited because my life was a shit show,” I admit, my words low.

“Because dragging you, so fucking innocent and so fucking good , into it… seemed like a crime.” I laugh a little with that word, inhaling again, exhaling through my nose, letting the nicotine soothe me.

I turn to her again, see she’s looking out the window, the orange bag of Reese’s still in her lap.

“And with college coming, I was going to get out of my house. Out from underneath my mom—away from all of her bullshit. Hell, I even thought I’d try to find a way for my brother to live with me, because it was that bad. ”

She stiffens in her seat but doesn’t face me.

“Then everything happened. And this past summer, Tristan… he tried to kill himself because my mom is a cunt.”

I hear her sharp intake of breath, see her turn toward me, her eyes wide.

I keep staring at her as I flick my cigarette out the window, swallowing hard as my fingers curl around the steering wheel, for something to do with my hands.

“And I was so, so fucking glad I never brought you around her. She’s poison, and it was enough that she’d gotten to my brother.

If she’d gotten to you…” I glance out the windshield. “I’d probably kill her.”

I drop my hands to my lap, running them over my black sweats. “After that night , with you, I thought about hurting myself too. My friends.” I turn to face her. “ Chase.”

Her complexion, already so fair, turns white, and I think about murdering Chase all over again.

I grab her arm, tugging it away from her chest, flipping her palm, trailing my index finger over the faintest of white lines, six in a row on her inner arm.

Then more. Newer. Recent.

Her hand starts to tremble.

“You’re not the only one who bled that night, and all the ones after. I almost know why Tristan did it.”

Her eyes widen as she watches my finger brushing over her wounds.

“Felt good, didn’t it?” I whisper, watching her watch me. Remembering what I told her. That it makes me feel alive.

She takes a shaky breath in.

I dip my head, flicking my tongue over her cuts.

I hear her whimper.

“You can tell me, baby.” I press my thumb over one wound, lifting my head to stare down at her.

She winces as I put more pressure over it.

“Tell me you liked it. Tell me seeing yourself bleed wasn’t a high you’ll never get anywhere else? No drugs, no alcohol. Nothing is that euphoric.”

Slowly, she looks up, through those long, dark lashes, her golden eyes on me. “There is one thing,” she whispers.

I tighten my hold on her wrist. “What’s that, baby?”

She stares at me a long moment. Then she says, “You.”

My breath catches as I hold her gaze, then look at where she’s hurt herself.

“If that’s true,” I brush my thumb over her cuts, “stop doing this. Let me be it for you.” I swallow hard and stare at her arm.

“And I’ve been stalking you since I met you, baby,” I answer her earlier question. “And it’s only going to get worse.”