Page 133 of Stuck with my Boss Daddies

“You did this.”

He tsked, stepping closer, his polished shoes untouched by the wreckage.

“No, sweetheart. You did.” He smirked. “Always making a mess of things, aren’t you?”

I shook my head, my body trembling. “No?—”

“You ruin everything you touch,” he continued, voice silk over steel. “You think they’re different? That they won’t figure it out? That they won’t leave you like everyone else?”

My breath hitched.

His smirk widened.

“Poor, desperate, Sadie. Always chasing after things she can’t have.” He leaned in, voice dropping to a whisper. “And you really thought they’d love you? Just like you thought, I would love you…”

The fire roared higher, swallowing the truck whole.

And I jolted awake.

My body was drenched in sweat, my hands clenched so tight my nails had left crescent-shaped marks in my palms. My breath came in panicked, shallow bursts, my heart slamming against my ribs like it was trying to escape.

I wasn’t in the wreckage. I wasn’t on the road.

I was in Kai’s bed.

Safe. Alive.

But I had lost them.

I had lost them, and I had felt every aching second of it.

A sob clawed its way up my throat, but I swallowed it down, shaking, staring into the darkness of the room, careful not to wake up Kai.

But inside me, the wreckage still burned.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Sadie

The walls feltlike they were closing in, pressing against my ribs and squeezing the breath from my lungs. My pulse pounded, a frantic drumbeat that rattled my bones.

I gripped the edge of the bathroom sink so tightly my knuckles turned white, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough to ground me.

I forced myself to meet my own gaze in the mirror. My reflection was a stranger—wild, panicked eyes, skin too pale, too clammy, like all the life had been drained from me.

I looked like someone on the edge of breaking. And maybe I was.

The nightmare clung to me, wrapping around my throat like hands intent on squeezing the air from my lungs.

I could still hear the impact, metal crumpling like paper, the shriek of tires, the deafening silence that followed. I could still see the flames swallowing them whole, feel the heat licking at my skin, smell the sharp, acrid scent of burning fuel.

Samuel. Kai. Adam.

Gone.

Just like that.

My body convulsed with a silent sob, my nails digging into the porcelain. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. But it felt real. It felt too damn real.

---