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His thumbs wiped at my cheeks, catching tears like he could erase what had happened if he just tried hard enough. He kept murmuring apologies under his breath, broken and relentless, each one sounding no less desperate than the last.

Ryder grabbed Harvey from behind and wrenched him back with a grunt, yanking his arms and slamming him into the wall hard enough to rattle the shelves. Harvey barely had time to make a sound before Ryder had him pinned with his forearm locked across his throat and his teeth bared in a snarl that I’d never seen on his face. I realized there was so much I didn’t know about him, this man wearing a badge who looked like he’d gone feral.

Just like the rest of this town, the sheriff was full of secrets.

I tried to talk to Sterling, to tell him I was okay, but my tongue still wouldn’t cooperate. Whatever Harvey had injected me with was not wearing off quickly. The words came out wrong, slurred and broken, a helpless sound that made Sterling’s face tighten even more.

“I’m…okay,” I finally managed, barely, the effort burning. I forced the rest out. “Can’t…move. Needle.”

His hands stilled for half a second, and he took a deep breath as he caressed my cheek. “Okay, baby. It’s okay,” he murmured again.

“Mar…vis…?” I tried.

“She’ll be all right,” he assured me. “She’s at the hospital now.”

Ryder started dragging Harvey toward the stairs, and Sterling’s head snapped up.

“Where the hell are you going?” he growled.

Ryder didn’t even pause. “Taking him in,” he said flatly, already hauling Harvey up the first step.

“You can take him in when I’m done with him,” Sterling snapped.

Ryder froze on the second step. He looked back over his shoulder at Sterling, something unreadable passing between them.

Harvey whimpered, sagging against Ryder’s hold, but neither of them was paying attention to him.

Ryder’s jaw ticked. He glanced at me, then back at Sterling. Slowly, he nodded and stepped back down, throwing Harvey to the floor. Harvey hit the concrete with a grunt, curling in on himself like a wounded animal.

Sterling suddenly brushed a kiss against my lips and got off his knees, rolling his shoulders like a man shaking off the last of his restraint.

“I was going to wait until after I got you to marry me,” he said quietly as he began to pace. “Thought it’d be…safer, maybe. But I guess now’s as good a time as any…when you can’t run away.”

What the fuck did that mean?

My mouth opened, but all that came out was a garbled, slurred mess. “Wha…do you…mean?” The words melted together into something barely intelligible.

He gently pushed a piece of hair out of my face. “I told you about the gas, baby. How it gets into people’s heads. How it can wake things up inside them. For me…I get certain urges. Dark ones.”

Sterling took a deep breath, his eyes watching me expectantly like he was waiting for me to respond. He finally nodded like my silence was answer enough.

“My mom was the same,” he said, softer now. “She fought it. Every day. Tried to bury it and pretend it wasn’t there.” His mouth flattened slightly, something flickering behind his eyes. “And it worked…for a while.”

My pulse pounded in my ears.

“Until it didn’t,” he continued. “Until it built up so much it just…broke out of her. And when it did, it wasn’t controlled or careful.” His gaze locked onto mine. “She hurt people who didn’t deserve it. Innocent people.”

A cold wave rolled through me.

“She couldn’t live with that,” he said quietly. “The guilt over what she’d done. That’s why she ended it.”

My breath came in short, useless pulls.

“So I made a different choice.”

He stepped closer, crouching in front of me, his hand settling against my cheek again, grounding and terrifying all at once.

“I didn’t fight it,” he murmured. “I leaned into it. Learned it. Controlled it.”