matter why, just stop her!” he boomed then hung up and looked to me with his hands shaking and his eyes wild.
“Tell me she didn’t mean it.” He grabbed my shirt in his fist, yanking me closer as I started to slip into a dark abyss of chaos and agony inside me. “Tell me this is all some fucking joke, some other way to torture me that you two are in on, anything but this being true.”
I opened and closed my mouth, my throat burning and my heart so broken that I knew it would never recover from this.
“I can’t,” I choked out and hurt washed through Fox’s expression as he hunted my eyes for a lie, but he didn’t find any there.
He turned his head to the sky and roared his fury as the clouds split apart and rain started crashing down on us, the cold trickling over my body and encasing me whole. Mutt howled to the sky with him, a mournful noise leaving his throat like he understood that he’d been left behind too.
This isn’t happening.
This isn’t the end of our story.
But I knew in my soul that it was.
Rogue had played me like a fool, taken her revenge out on all of us like a wolf toying with lambs. Now she’d ripped us to pieces, leaving us bloody in her wake. And all I could think about was that I should have known. Because Rogue Easton could never really love the boys who’d destroyed her. We’d broken her and should never have expected forgiveness for that. And now we were finally paying the price of that betrayal and it was the worst kind of torture I’d ever known.
I dumped the boat by the Harlequin House dock and jumped out onto the jetty just as the storm made it to me and the rain broke free of the clouds.
There was an ache in my chest which kept growing, sharpening, trying to force me to turn from this path and make another choice. Any other choice. But that was the problem. There wasn't one. Not one that could save them from themselves or the curse of wanting me. This was the only solution that would work, and I was fixed on this decision.
The kiss of the cold raindrops against my skin helped sharpen my focus as I forced that knot of tension deep down into my gut and locked it away with every other bad thought and feeling contained within my aching soul.
This wasn't about me. Never had been. Never should have been.
I strode up to the house as lightning broke across the sky overhead, letting myself in through the back door and glancing around at the dark building in relief as I realised Luther had clearly left.
I lingered for a moment in the kitchen, breathing in the memories of the time I'd spent here with the Harlequin boys and wondering if I'd ever had a chance to do this differently. But as I glanced up at the mirror in the hall, taking in my bruised lips and the emptiness in my eyes, I knew I couldn't have. Shawn had been right about me in that regard. I was just a broken toy, fighting against my place in this world when everyone around me could see where I was destined to end up. So this was just me accepting that fate.
I stepped into the kitchen and pulled open one of the cupboards, pushing aside boxes of cereal before claiming the gun which was stashed there and jamming it into the back of my shorts. Then I turned away from the house full of memories, heading into the garage and snatching the keys for my Jeep from the hook before hurrying down the stairs.
The roof was down but I didn't care about that. I wanted to feel the rain on my flesh. I wanted to feel something other than the burn inside me which was fighting against all of my attempts to contain it.
I started up the engine and drove out of the garage without looking back.
The Harlequins guarding the gates stepped forward as if they had some idea to block my escape, so I just flattened my foot to the gas and smashed straight into the metal gates. The impact sent a spike of shock through my limbs but then I bounced over the fallen ironwork and tore away into the night with the yells of the Harlequins chasing me away.
I chose the most direct route across town