Page 46 of The Sin Binders Ascent

“It’s five miles, Luna.”

“Good,” I snap. “That’ll give me time to forget you exist.”

His laugh chases me as I march into the storm. But it isn’t amused. It’s hungry. Like he already knows,

I won’t forget a thing.

I walk like fury can outpace a storm. The road curves ahead, slick with mud and gravel, tree limbs clawing overhead as if the forest itself is warning me. Water seeps into my boots, soaks the hem of my jeans, but I don’t stop. Won’t. Because if I do, I’ll have to look at him again. And I’ll say something I regret, or worse, I’llfeelsomething I don’t understand.

Behind me, boots crunch through wet grit. I know it’s him before he even speaks. He moves like the rain parts for him, like storms weremadefor him.

“Didn’t think you were the storm-off-and-cry-in-the-rain type,” Theo says, voice cutting through the downpour like a blade wrapped in velvet.

I whirl around so fast the wind punches my hair into my mouth. “You’re following me now?”

“Following implies I wasn’t invited.”

“You weren’t.”

“I didn’t sayyouinvited me,” he says with a crooked smile. “But your car certainly did. Kind of a dick move to strand a guy.”

“You thinkyou’rethe one who’s stranded?” I spit, my hands slicing through the rain. “You shouldn’t even be here. You were erased, Theo. Buried. And I don’t care what kind of poor, tragic, banished villain story you’re trying to sell,”

He steps forward, jaw ticking. “You think Ichosethis? To be locked away? Forgotten like I was nothing?”

“I don’t care,” I snap. “You’re notmyproblem.”

He laughs, low and mocking. “Keep telling yourself that. Maybe one day you’ll believe it.”

“I wantnothingto do with you,” I say, voice breaking with more than rain. “Nothing.”

The path narrows, turns muddy, and I misstep, just once. My boot slides across slick rock, and before I can catch myself, gravity claims me. I pitch forward, foot slipping off the edge of the embankment, and my arms flail wildly before I crash down into a shallow, mud-churned ditch with a loud, humiliatingsplat.

Cold water soaks through everything. Twigs dig into my hip. Mud cakes my hands. My pride shatters into a thousand sharp shards.

“Fuck,” I hiss, shoving wet hair out of my face. My hands are trembling, not from the cold, but from sheer, boiling embarrassment.

A second later, another form slides down the slope behind me with too much grace to be accidental.

Theo lands in the muck beside me with a splash, mud slicking across his arms, his grin impossibly intact. “Well,” he drawls, brushing water off his chest, “you fall like you fight, messy, reckless, and kind of hot.”

I lunge at him, palms smacking against his chest, shoving with all the fury I’ve swallowed since the moment I met him. “Why are you like this?Why can’t you just leave me alone!”

He doesn’t stumble. Doesn’t flinch. Just grabs my wrists, gently, like I’m a flame he doesn’t want to extinguish.

“I don’twantto leave you alone,” he says, quiet now, voice like smoke curling low in the dark. “You don’t get it yet, but youwill. You’re not running from me, Luna. You’re running toward something you don’t want to admit.”

I yank free. Mud smears across both our clothes, and my fury feels like it’s going to rip through my ribs. “You arrogant, smug,insufferable, ”

“Sexy bastard?” he offers.

I punch him in the shoulder, hard enough to sting my knuckles.

He laughs again.

Gods, Ihatehim.

My hand hits his chest again, harder this time, shoving with every ounce of breathless rage that hasn't had anywhere to go since Blackwell opened that fucking door and dragged the past into my present.

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