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“You should’ve just let me go,” I cried, the words breaking apart as fast as they left my mouth. “You should’ve just let me leave⁠—”

“Sienna,” he said roughly, trying to pull me closer.

“No!” I shoved at him again. “Why are you here? Why did you come after me?” I hit him once more, my hands shaking. “I was leaving. I was gone. You’re ruining everything!”

He caught my wrists firmly, holding them against his chest so I couldn’t keep hurting myself as his forehead dropped to mine despite my protests.

“I’m never going to let you go,” he said fervently. “There isn’t a place you could run that I wouldn’t follow. You could disappear off the face of the earth, and I’d still find a way to you.”

The words should have terrified me.

David had said things like that once. Promises disguised as shackles. Words that sounded like love but always ended in pain. When David spoke those words, my body had learned to flinch, to plan exits, to measure distance to doors.

But this was different.

With David, I’d wanted to run every single day.

With Sterling, I wanted the opposite. I wanted him to want me the way I wanted him. Fully and unapologetically…obsessively. I wanted to be chosen so completely that there was no room left for doubt, because that was how he already lived in me, threaded through every thought, every breath.

I wanted him to love me like that forever.

But you couldn’t truly love someone when you didn’t know the worst thing about them…

“You promised you’d stay for a month⁠—”

“I promised nothing, I had no choice,” I choked out, and his body trembled like the words were physically hurting him. “Let me go.”

“Never,” he vowed. “Tell me why you ran. Tell me why, and I’ll fix it.”

The fight drained out of me all at once, leaving my bones hollow and aching. My hands fell uselessly against his chest, and my weight sagged into him as a broken sound tore out of my throat. He caught me instantly, his arms tightening around me.

I pressed my face into his chest, the rain and my tears continuing to soak us both. I gripped onto his shirt like I might drown if I let go.

“My ex-husband is dead,” I whispered, the words barely audible over the relentless drum of the rain.

Sterling went completely still against me, his arms locked around my waist. The warmth of his body was the only thing keeping the chill from sinking into my bones.

“And you’re upset about that?” he finally asked carefully, like he was stepping through a minefield he didn’t want to set off.

I lifted my head then, slowly, the rain streaming down my face and mixing with my tears. His lashes were spiked dark and wet, framing those stormy blue eyes that searched mine intensely. Lightning flickered in the distance, illuminating the sharp lines of his jaw, the water glistening on his skin, turning him into something carved from the storm itself, beautiful and dangerous and…something I wished I could keep.

“I’m glad he’s dead,” I said hoarsely. Then I swallowed, because there was no soft way through what came next. I had to tell him the hard truth. “But you need to know…he’s dead because I killed him.”

CHAPTER 41

SIENNA

He stared down at me like the ground had shifted under his feet and he was recalibrating where to place them. His silence was worse than shouting. Worse than disgust. It stretched, heavy and stunned, until my skin prickled with it.

“You killed him?” he finally asked uncertainly as if he was testing the words out. “Like…in self-defense?”

I bit down on my lip and pulled away from him, breaking the circle of his arms before he could stop me. I straightened, my spine locking into place, rigid and unyielding.

“No,” I said quietly.

His brow furrowed. “I’m confused,” he confessed. “What are you saying?”

“I planned it,” I told him in a voice steadier than I felt. “I waited for him.”