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Her gaze shifts back to me. “And from what I’ve seen lately, you’re not exactly doing a terrible job of it yourself.”
My head snaps toward her. “I didn’t say I love him.”
Cali’s eyebrows lift. “Neither did I.”
Fuck.
A grin starts pulling at her mouth.
“You’re an asshole.”
“Spend enough time around Scar, apparently it rubs off.”
Despite everything twisting inside me, a laugh slips out.
“There.” Cali bumps her shoulder lightly against mine. “You’re still breathing.”
Before I can answer, a door opens down the hallway, and every head in the common room turns.
Sentinel comes out first, and whatever tiny bit of relief Cali managed to drag out of me disappears when I see his face. The angel who usually has a smart-ass comment ready for everything looks fucking rattled.
Carnage follows him into the common room a second later.
My siren reaches for him before I can stop her.
His hellhound answers just as fast.
The connection hits me hot and rough, his anger pouring through with enough force to curl my fingers at my sides. But underneath it is the same thing I felt when Malgrave touched him—that horrible absence where something should be.
Carnage’s eyes find mine across the room. He stops, and for a second, everyone else disappears beneath the force of that look.
I don’t know what he and Sentinel figured out in that room, but whatever it is, Carnage looks fucking furious, and Sentinel looks scared.
That combination gets the entire clubhouse moving.
“Where’s Raze?” Sentinel’s voice cracks through the room, and three brothers are already moving before he finishes the sentence.
I don’t move.
My body reacts before my head catches up, muscles tightening with the same instinct that kept me alive every time the Conclave got too close.
Then Carnage looks at me. His jaw is locked hard enough to flex beneath the skin, his fists clenched at his sides while the hellhound pushes close enough that black has started bleeding into his amber eyes. Every part of him looks wound tight, ready to tear into the first thing that gives him a reason.
But his eyes stay on mine.
The anger is easy to read. Carnage has never exactly been subtle about that.
What gets me is what sits underneath it.
Whatever he and Sentinel figured out in that room has shaken him, and Carnage doesn’t strike me as a man who shakes easily.
I’m already moving toward him before anyone says a word, and the closer I get, the more I expect that old instinct to kick in. The one that tells me to keep my distance, protect what’s mine, and never let anyone close enough to get inside the walls I’ve spent years building.
It never comes.
Not with him.
Carnage has never pushed his way into anything I wasn’t ready to give him. Every step closer has been mine to take, every touch mine to accept or refuse, and right now, careful feels a hell of a lot less important than getting my hands on him and knowing he’s okay.
