Page 141 of Carrick
I kept my voice gentle. “He didn’t look panicked. No one forced him in. He walked to the car like it was familiar. Like hebelonged.”
“No. No, there has to be a reason,” she said, her voice shaking as her hands trembled at her sides. “They threatened him. They’ve got something on him. He’s pretending. Playing them. Buying time. Trying to find an escape plan or—something.”
“Bellamy.”
Her name left my mouth like a tether, pulling her still. Her body locked mid-breath, frozen in place.
I stepped in slowly, raising my hands with care. I didn’t touch her at first—just closed the distance like I was approaching something fragile, something on the edge of shattering. When I finally cupped her face, it wasn’t to hold her back or contain her. It was just to keep her there. To anchor her. To stop her from flying apart beneath the weight of her despair.
Her eyes met mine—wide, wet, wild with disbelief—and I saw it all.
The grief she hadn’t let herself feel. The desperate denial. The fierce, fractured hope clinging to life by its fingernails.
“You can’t know what it was like,” she whispered, the words cracking along the edge of her breath. “To lose him the first time. We were just kids. They said they were protecting us, and then they ripped us apart. Two years. Two years I didn’t see him. I didn’t know where he was. Didn’t know if he was safe, or sick, or—” Her voice faltered. “I used to wake up from nightmares,sweating and screaming, because I dreamed he was dead in a ditch and no one would tell me. Because they thought I was too young to handle it.”
Her voice broke entirely on the last word, splintering like glass. That was it. I didn’t wait.
I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her into me, hard—my grip locking at her waist, one hand sliding to the back of her sweatshirt. Not to control her. Just to hold her together.
She didn’t resist. Didn’t speak. She folded into me like something inside her had finally given out, her fists bunching into the front of my shirt, forehead pressed to my chest like she could hide there. Like she wanted to.
“Tell me he’s not one of them,” she choked out, hoarse and small, barely audible.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t lie to her.
So I didn’t say anything at all. I just held her tighter and bent my head, pressing a kiss to the top of her hair. She smelled like anxiety and soap and the barest trace of cedar from the shampoo she liked.
“I’m going to fix this,” I said quietly, right into her crown. “I don’t know how yet. But I’m not letting him slip through the cracks again.”
She didn’t respond. Didn’t need to. She clung to me like I was the last thing keeping her upright. And for now, I was.
Then her breathing shifted—not with sobs, but with panic. That sharp, creeping kind. The kind that didn’t scream or thrash or make a scene. It coiled beneath the skin, quiet and deadly, invisible until it was already too late. The kind I recognized from war zones and funerals and hollow-eyed survivors too proud to ask for help.
“He’s in danger,” she whispered into my chest, the words muffled and breathless.
“I know.”
“He’s going to get himself killed.”
“Maybe not,” I said, but the words tasted like ash. Even I didn’t believe them.
She pulled back, just enough to look up at me. Her eyes were glassy, rimmed red. She looked lost. “I should’ve made him come with us,” she said, voice wobbling. “I should’ve begged harder. Threatened him. Dragged him if I had to.”
“Bellamy—”
“This is my fault,” she cut in, sharp. “I knew he was in over his head. I knew what they were. And I still left him.”
“You didn’t leave him,” I said, my voice steady now. “You were protecting yourself. You followed the plan. You trusted that he’d do what he promised.”
“I was running,” she snapped, and there it was—raw and exposed. “I told myself I was surviving, but I wasrunning. And now he’s going to end up in a shallow grave somewhere, and I’m going to have to live knowing I let it happen.”
“You didn’tletanything happen,” I said. “You didn’t have control. None of us do. The Dom Krovi is a machine that chews people up and spits out bones. You didn’t build it. You didn’t send him into it.”
She let out a bitter, sharp laugh. “I’m the reason he got involved in the first place. I’m the one they came after. I’m the reason we’re both buried in this mess.”
“No,” I said again—more forcefully this time. “You’re not the reason. You’re not the villain.They are.”
She didn’t answer. She just stood there, her fists trembling at her sides, jaw clenched, eyes staring past me into nothing. Like if she stopped focusing, she might disappear.
