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Fuck, she’s not mine. She’s his.

Or was.

Jeez, this is complicated.

I scrub my face with my hand and peer into the bathroom where the cat disappeared. And that’s when my heart stops beating.

I’m kicked into action driven entirely by instinct and—emotion.

She’s sprawled, face down on the floor. She’s in her underwear, and nothing else and she looks—fuck, I’m not sure she’s breathing.

I pull her into my arms, relieved at the warmth of her skin. She can’t be dead if she’s burning up, but I can’t hear around the thundering of my heart. I think the thing is trying to claw its way from my chest and into hers. If I thought she needed it, I’d carve it from my very chest myself. If I thought she needed it, I’d offer her my beating heart and die happily in the knowledge that she would live another day.

That’s the moment when it all comes to a head. When I know I’d carve out my own heart for this woman who shattered mine—that I know with certainty that I never stopped loving her. Even when she was his, she never stopped being mine.

And she’s mine now. Mine to care for whether she likes it or not. Whether it’s right or not. Whether it makes sense or not.

“Come on, baby. Open your eyes.”

She moans and tries to push me away. I don’t let her. Her eyes open, glassy with fever. She calls me Tate, and that blade in my chest twists.

Her body is limp against mine as I turn on the shower. I need to bring her temperature down. She’s delirious.

I set the water to a gentle warm, suspecting it’ll feel cold against her burning skin. Then I step in with her, fully clothed. I’m right when I thought it would cool her down. Within minutes, her teeth are chattering, and goosebumps litter her skin. Her fingers curl into my shirt and she presses her body to mine, seeking warmth even in her fever.

I hold her close, and I’m some kind of messed up because I don’t want to let her go. She doesn’t even realize it’s me. She thinks I’m her husband. My brother.

Still, I hold her tighter. I kiss her hair.

She trembles in my arms.

“Tate…” she sobs.

That blade twists again. I’m bleeding internally now.

There’s only so much a man can take.

“It’s okay,” I tell her as gently as I can. “You’re okay.”

“He’s back.” She’s sobbing harder now. Her body is shuddering almost violently in my arms, but her skin is still so warm. “He’s back and it hurts so much.”

Is she talking about me?

“Who, baby? Who is back?”

She burrows her face into my chest, and I hold her tighter as she spills sorrow and grief and guilt. “You loved me even when I loved him. You loved me when I couldn’t stop loving him. You told me it was okay…and I loved you for it.”

She’s not making sense. I’m frozen in the messy truth of her raw words, trying to decode them. Because they can’t mean what I think they mean.

“It is okay, Faye,” I manage, but the words fall rough with emotion.

Her fingers curl tighter into my soaked shirt. “He hates me.”

Christ. That cuts. “He doesn’t.”

“He does.” She sounds so broken.

I ache with the need to fix her. To glue all the pieces that living this life has shattered back together.