Page 49 of Vow to Claim You

So why does the thought feel like bone snapping?

I exhale through my nose, irritation curling tight in my chest. This is not how it works. This is not how I work. I don’t do feelings. I don’t care like this. I don’t⁠—

I drain the whiskey in one swallow, and it burns all the way down.

Whatever this thing is, it doesn’t change the rules. It only sharpens them. Ayanna is my wife. Bound by vows neither of us asked for, but vows nonetheless. And my world doesn’t care about feelings. It cares about lines that cannot be crossed.

I rise and stride toward the wall of glass, looking out into the darkness.

She thinks I let her have the goodbye because I am a good man. I let her have the goodbye because if I had not, she would’ve given it to him in her head for the rest of her life. I would rather she give it to him at gunpoint than carry him with her into my bed.

She can have her goodbye, but it ends there.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Ayanna

It’s close to midnight, and I stand at the window of my bedroom, fingers curled into the fabric of my robe, staring at the reflection of my own face layered over the dark glass. Eyes too red. Mouth pressed into a line that doesn’t soften no matter how long I hold it. I try to focus on the moon.

It doesn’t work.

All I see is Luca.

The way he was tied to that chair. Wrists bound behind his back like an offering left too long at an altar no god cared about. The room smelled of blood and bleach, a combination that lingered in the back of my throat long after I left. His face was swollen, bruises blooming across skin I couldn’t bring myself to study too closely.

He lifted his head when he heard me come in. His eyes found mine through the swelling. Through the blood. Through the ruin of a face I’d once kissed without a second thought. And he looked at me in a way I’d dreaded from the moment I signed those papers. Not with anger or pleading. Something worse, because he looked at me like he still saw the girl who loved him. Like he still believed she was standing there.

And maybe she was. Maybe that’s why my throat closed before I could force out a single word.

His mouth opened, but I didn’t give him a chance to speak. I turned before he could find a word, and I left him there—and the girl who loved him stayed behind on her side of that door, where she belongs.

I ran away. Like a coward. I hate myself for that more than anything else tonight.

But the sight of him… what was I supposed to say?

I’m sorry for ruining your life?

I’m sorry for loving you?

I’m sorry that loving me has always been a death sentence?

The guilt settles deep in my chest. Luca didn’t end up here because he was reckless, though he was. He didn’t end up here because he was stupid, though he was that too. He ended up here because of me. Because of a feeling neither of us knew how to bury when we should’ve.

Love.

That stupid, catastrophic thing people romanticize until it leaves bodies behind.

I press my forehead to the glass, breath fogging the window as I try, and fail, to shut my running thoughts.

I straighten slowly, wiping my cheeks with the back of my hand like a child who doesn’t want to admit she’s been crying. My reflection still stares back at me.

Aric said I would come back as his wife, which means whatever I left behind in that warehouse is gone for good.

When the morning comes, I will be Mrs. Vold.

Not Ayanna Almaviri.

Not the girl who fell in love with Luca Bassi.