Page 60 of The Truths We Burn

He kept staring up at me, eyes blazing through the vapor.

“Proving Rose right.”

There is no number of deep breaths that would calm me. The water is rushing too high, too fast. I’m done for.

I frantically search for the hoodie, thinking that if I can just smell him, just a brief whiff, it might help the ache inside my chest. There’s the feeling of my skin splitting open, my nerve endings all exposed to the oxygen.

No one tells you how painful panic attacks can be.

I scratch at my neck, feeling how searing hot it is. My hand rolls across the scar on my neck, knowing I’ll never be able to look at it in the mirror the same again.

“Did you hear me?” Easton says with urgency, grabbing at my forearm only to have me try to jerk it from his grip.

“Stop touching me, Sinclair. I told you, I did what you asked. Now leave me alone.”

“Disrespect me all you’d like, Sage.” He tightens his grip, heaving me into his body, making my panic only increase. “In a few months, it won’t matter, because I’m going to own you. I’m going to turn you into a pretty little trophy, a submissive wife, and I don’t care if I have to break that bitchy mouth to do it.”

Saliva spews from his mouth, splattering across my face. I grind my teeth, glaring up at him and fighting against his hold, but he only squeezes me tighter.

A whimper tries to fall from my lips at the growing pain from the pressure.

“It’ll be a cold day in hell when you break me, but by all means, give it your best shot,”I grit out, struggling to keep my facade up with everything going on.

With my heart aching, my anger flaring, and the feeling of suffocation, I’m going to lose my mind.

“God help you if you didn’t break his heart, and I mean demolish it until there is nothing left.” Easton presses his forehead aggressively into mine, knocking our faces together harshly. “I will make sure my father takes care of Rose. It would take nothing for him to pull a little string and poof.” He wiggles his fingers on his free hand. “She is gone. Wiped from existence, never to be heard of again.”

I swallow bile, knowing that’s the exact reason I even agreed to do this in the first place. I’m not sure if Easton is bluffing, but would I be willing to bet Rose’s life on it?

I can’t. Not when I know how much money Stephen Sinclair makes. Not when I know how powerful he is. I can’t risk it. I can’t risk her getting hurt or worse, dying because of me being selfish.

I’d been selfish my entire life.

It’s best for everyone involved if I just shut up and did as I’m told. Rook’s life would be easier, and Rose would be happy.

That’s what matters.

“You don’t have the balls,”I hiss.

“Try me, cunt.”

My palm snaps across his cheek without a second thought, so hard that it forces his head to turn in the opposite direction.

“It doesn’t matter what you do to me, Easton.” I laugh in his face, just as I did to Rook today, but this time, I mean it. I mean this bitter, sour laughter that pours from me like venom. “It doesn’t matter how much of daddy’s money you have or his control. You willneverbe Rook. You will never have me like he did. Not even close. So go ahead, break me, because I will slice your wrists open while you try.”

My chest heaves up and down, pulling in air and releasing it faster as the moments tick by. Easton’s changed—I’ve changed. Even though I always felt he had this darkness inside of him from the second we’d met, he had once been a decent human.

High school, expectations, his father. They turned him into something else entirely.

It did the exact same thing to me.

We are the same, Easton and I.

Scheming, fake, ego-filled humans with no regard for others.

Maybe it was fate that we had ended up here together.

I had expected it. Honestly, I did.