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“He’s going to kill you,” she cried, voice cracking. “I just—I can’t let that happen. It’ll just kill me. I have to…have to get you down…”

“And then what? You get him down and we all die? You think he won’t notice?” Christopher added. Evie froze before her glistening eyes peered over my shoulder as she shook her head solemnly. “You can’t save him any more than you can save yourself.” She shook her head, but there was no fight in it. Just…grief.

Then she turned back to me. Slowly. Like she was memorising me. And when she stepped forward, when she wrapped her arms around my neck—careful, so fucking careful despite the chains digging into my wrists—it felt like something inside me gave way completely.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered against my skin. “I just…you don’t belong here, and I…I missed you so much,” she cried as tears streaked down her flushed cheeks.

“I’ve missed you…more than…I could ever say,” I told her, my voice wrecked. “You have no…idea.”

No fucking idea how hard it’d been to wake up every morning and not even have a single moment of reprieve, because even in my dreams, I knew she was gone. Evie pulled back just enough to look at me, and there was disbelief there, like she thought—like…she thought I’d forgotten her.

Fucking impossible.

“You’ve missed me?” she asked, barely audible.

It hit harder than anything else.

Harder than the pain. Harder than the chains.

“Are you kidding me?” I cried. “I’ve missed you so fucking much, Evie.”

Her face broke, and when she collapsed against me, sobbing like something inside her had finally given out after years of holding, I pressed my cheek against her hair and closed my eyes, inhaling her in as I struggled to take a single breath.

Because this?

This wasn’t a dream.

Dreams didn’t hurt like this.

Dreams didn’t feel like losing her all over again…and finding her at the exact same time.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EVIE

The cold rag glided between his blood-stained toes, erasing the crusted crimson as the coppery scent bloomed in the stale air. My heart lay beside me, torn and shredded to pieces, a gaping hole in my chest from where it used to be. My hands didn’t feel like mine anymore. Nothing did. It was like my soul had been torn out and left somewhere far behind me, and all the while, I kept moving. Everything inside me stayed somewhere else entirely, broken and scattered in places I didn’t know how to reach. I had to stop twice just to breathe properly, and each inhale felt like it scraped against bone.

I’d pictured Jackson here before.

A thousand versions of it.

Only, he was bursting through the front door and rescuing me, taking me far away from here where we’d buy a little property and hide away from the world—just the two of us until the time came when there was more. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. He had a life. A career. A country that cheered his name. Jackson wasn’t supposed to be here, he wasn’t supposed to be a victim of The Skinner. It…it wasn’t fair.

My hand shook as I moved the cloth again, slower now, memorising things I didn't have time for before. Like the fine hair above his toes, the small mole on his ankle, and the Scooby-Doo tattoo on his calf. Just…small things I’d tucked away in a box where I’d already been collecting reasons to love him my whole life without realising I was building something I’d never be allowed to keep.

Tears slid down my throat and left icy trails down my chest. I wrung the towel out over the bucket and continued the same method on his other foot until the remaining water was pink and murky. My knees cracked as I stood and ran the rag gently over a torn gash along his side before I stopped when his body jerked with a sharp inhale.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

His jaw clenched, eyes screwed shut, pain carved deep into every line of his face. Wayne always hit the hardest on the first night. One time, he hit a woman so hard, he broke her nose. It was almost fully healed, albeit crooked, when Wayne killed her.

“Don’t,” he forced out, his voice hoarse. “Please, don’t apologise.”

It physically hurt to be around him. Every touch, every pain-filled grimace, every trickle of blood that seeped down my forearm and soaked my sleeves was pure agony. When I finally reached his chest and saw my name inked across his heart again, the world blurred around me. I crushed the rag in one hand as the other trembled over the ink. I touched it delicately at first, tiny butterfly legs tracing each letter, and watched as goosebumps prickled along his skin when I flattened my palm over the cursive and felt the rhythm of his heartbeat.

Lub-dub.

Lub-dub.