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It was time.

If he couldn’t stand for me, then I had to let him go.

I couldn’t keep doing this to myself.

Brinley was right. If he didn’t meet me where I was, then he didn’t deserve to be there.

It might break my heart.

Okay, fine. It was already splintering into a billion pieces. But I would make it through.

Trevan stared at me like I’d dragged a blade across his chest with the intention of bleeding him out.

Grief pendulated in the air between us while he stood silent.

Right.

Okay.

I gulped around the agony and turned around. Needing to escape because I couldn’t stand there and listen to him give me all the reasons why he couldn’t.

Why I wasn’t enough.

Why I wasn’t worth fighting for.

“Fuck, Elena.” A rush of intensity blistered over me from behind.

Shockwaves that stopped me in my tracks.

His voice came as a low, guttural growl. “You think it’s not you for me? Is that what you really think?”

My heart jackhammered, and the hairs lifted at my nape and skittered across my body.

My eyes squeezed closed, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to turn around because I couldn’t take another rejection from him. I wasn’t going to keep doing this to myself time and again.

He took a step forward, then another. The floor trembled below.

A scattering of energy and his dark, obliterating light.

“Do you think I don’t go to sleep thinking about you and that I don’t wake up with you on my mind first thing in the morning? Do you think you don’t hold me hostage in my dreams? Do you think I’m not your prisoner every fucking second of the day?”

His words were thick. Written like his own scars.

Trevan took another step forward, coming so close that his scent crashed over me.

Charred oak and butterscotch.

“Do you think this mangled heart doesn’t beat for you?” That time, he whispered it near my ear. “Every fucking beat, it’s yours, Elena.”

A soft gasp rasped from my lungs, and I slowly turned.

I was pinned by the expression that raged on Trevan’s face.

Guilt and vulnerability and determination.

“It’s you, Elena. It’s your faith in this world when it’s given you nothing to trust. It’s your joy in the sorrow and your smile in the darkness. It’s your love for everyone around you. It’s your light and your goodness and your laughter that is the only song I know.”

Emotion roiled in his eyes. Brown, tumbled stone.