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She laughs. “Or what?” She drives her knee toward my stomach.

I twist, and it catches my thigh instead.

Pain flashes through me, and my control slips.

I’m hot with rage. So fucking hot. I shove her again. Harder. She staggers back, but she doesn’t fall. Instead she grabs my hair. Pain rips across my scalp as she yanks me toward her.

I cry out and grab blindly for anything.

Her dress.

Her arm.

The belt.

“Trash.” She spits in my face. “That’s all you are. That’s all you’ll ever be. Do you really think Nathaniel Vexley could love you?”

Love.

The word strikes harder than the belt.

Not because I believe it.

Because I want to.

And the thought empowers me. Gives me strength.

I slam both hands into Audrey’s chest.

She loses her grip on my hair. For half a second, her face is nothing but shock. Then her shoe catches on a corner of the bed linen.

She falls backward fast, and the back of her head strikes the corner of an old cedar chest near the wall.

A dull crack.

Her body folds at an unnatural angle and drops to the floor.

Silence.

Everything stops.

I stand with my hands still lifted, fingers spread.

Audrey doesn’t move.

“Mrs. Steppe?” My voice is barely a whisper.

She lies half on her side, one arm bent beneath her, her uniform twisted around her legs.

She’s stunned. Knocked out.

She’ll wake up furious. She’ll scream. She’ll tell everyone I attacked her. She’ll ruin me.

I drop to my knees beside her. “Mrs. Steppe?”

I don’t know where to touch. Her neck is at a wrong angle. Wrong in a way my mind refuses to accept at first.

Until—