Page 158 of Ruin My Life

“My little rose… You were given every reason to wither. Every reason to die. But you didn’t. You survived the blood. The fire. The silence. You took a bullet that would’ve ended the strongest of men, and you came out the other side with all your bright colours. All your dangerous, beautiful thorns still intact.”

Her breath hitches.

“You didn’t just survive,” I murmur. “You turned the pain into purpose. There’s nothing in this world that can kill your flame. Not even you.”

She bites her lower lip, her gaze dropping to the carpet. To the stain. To the echo of a memory so loud, we can still hear it breathing between the walls.

Then—finally—she looks back at me.

“Why are you here?” she asks, her voice wrecked from the storm she let loose. “They burned down The Speakeasy. You’re not safe here.”

“Neither are you,” I say gently. “I’ve gotten everyone else out of the city. It’s just you and me now. And I’m not leaving without you.”

Her expression softens—then crumples.

“Damon... you shouldn’t—I can’t—”

“You can take as much time as you need, Brie,” I tell her. “But I’m not leaving. I’ll fend off every Songbird that dares to steps through that door. I’ll stay as long as you need me too—however long it takes until you’re ready to get up off this floor.”

We sit there a little longer. In the silence. In the ruin.

Until, finally, she shifts out of my lap and stands.

She wraps her arms around herself and scans the house—what’s left of it. The blood. The ghosts. The memories that will never heal.

Then she breathes.

And she turns to me.

“Where are we going?”

The wordwesows deeply in my chest like something fragile that’s trying to find a safe place to bloom.

She doesn’t even realize she said it. And now’s not the time to tell her what I wantusto be. So I take her hand, grab her duffle from near the door, and lead her back out into the world.

Once we’re both inside the car, I glance at her—take one nervous breath—and finally answer.

“Somewhere only we know.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Brie

WE’VE BEEN DRIVING FOR NEARLY FIVE HOURS,highway lanes stretching endlessly ahead of us, each mile pulling me further away from the wreckage I left behind.

I’m not sure where Damon is headed until the sign flashes by—Welcome to Rhode Island.

I turn my head, slow. Damon keeps his eyes forward.

He shrugged off his coat two hours ago, and now the late-afternoon sun glints through the tinted windows, dancing across the snow-caked shoulders of the road.

“Damon... where are we going?” I ask, even though a sinking part of me already knows.

His fingers drum the steering wheel once, twice.

“Somewhere the Songbirds would never think to look,” he says. “Because they don’t know it exists—no one does. Not even my inner circle. Just me, the nurses who come twice a week… and now, very recently, you.”

And there it is.