Page 185 of Carrick
No one answered. Not because we didn’t want to. Because none of us could lie to each other tonight. Not after what we’d seen. After what we couldn’t stop. After what was already written in ash and bone.
I dragged in a breath, and it scraped—raw and wrong, like the air no longer belonged in my lungs. This house didn’t feel like it was meant for people like me anymore. Not after watching her shatter with nothing left in me to stop it. Not after letting her fall and failing to catch her before she hit the ground.
“She doesn’t hate you,” Quinn said, quietly. But the look Bellamy had given me—the crack of her voice, the tremble in her hands when she backed away—said something else. Something that hurt worse than hatred. It said betrayal. It said you were the last thing I believed in. And I broke that.
Still—this wasn’t where I was meant to be. Not in this room. Not surrounded by people who didn’t know what it felt like to have her look at you and fall apart from the inside out. Who didn’t know how it gutted you when she didn’t scream, didn’taccuse—just looked at you like the world had ended and you were the one holding the match.
I turned toward the hallway. Sully’s head lifted. “Carrick?—”
“I know,” I said, already moving.
He didn’t stop me. Didn’t offer advice or follow. Because this wasn’t about the mission. It wasn’t about tactics, or cleanup, or retaliation. This was Bellamy. And I’d walked her into a war I couldn’t win.
Every step down the hall felt like trespassing. Like I wasn’t just moving through a house anymore—I was moving through the wreckage of something I’d promised to protect. The air grew heavier the closer I got to her room—thick with grief and tension and something wilder underneath, like a storm still crouched beneath the bed.
Her door was shut. Not locked. But closed. A boundary. A plea. A consequence. The sound of her sobs had faded, but the echo still clung to the walls, to the floorboards, to the skin stretched too tight across my chest. I could feel them, like aftershocks. Like the tremble before a second collapse.
I raised my hand, let it hover just above the wood. One knock. Just one. Soft. Careful. Barely a breath. “Bellamy,” I said quietly. “It’s me.”
Silence. Not cold. Not indifferent. Wounded.
I waited—one second, then two, then five. Then I turned the knob. Whatever wreckage lay beyond that door, I’d already promised her I’d walk through fire to reach her.
And this was the burn I deserved.
I stepped inside.
And everything changed.
35
Bellamy
I didn’t remember running.Not the hallway, not the slam of the door, not the way my name sounded when it left Carrick’s mouth. It all blurred together, motion and sound breaking apart into a single splintered moment that cracked wide open and swallowed me whole. What stayed—what burned itself into my body like a brand—was the way my lungs felt like they were folding inward. Like grief had hands. Like it had shoved them between my ribs and wrapped them around my chest until I couldn’t tell whether I was choking on air or on smoke.
I ended up on the floor. I didn’t remember falling, but that’s where I landed, half-curled, half-collapsed, crumpled between the bed and the wall. My knees were tucked to my chest, arms wrapped tight around my middle like I could hold my insides together with muscle alone. I was shaking. Breathless. Drowning on dry land. Every inhale scraped like sandpaper. Every exhale felt like it was being dragged out of somewhere deeper than lungs. Somewhere primal. Somewhere grief lives before it even finds a name.
He was gone. Rayden. Gone.
Not missing. Not on the run. Not bleeding out in some alley while we held onto hope. No. Gone.
A fucking RPG.
My mind refused to accept it every time the thought resurfaced, unable to make the image fit. Refused to believethatwas the answer—that he’d been taken out by a goddamn rocket. As if he were a war zone. A threat. Not someone to arrest, or warn, or silence. But to erase. To eliminate.
And for what? What had he done? He’d tried to make it right. He’d taken a risk. Trusted the wrong people one last time. And they answered with fire. He thought he was safe.
Carrick told me he’d watch him.
Carrick said—he promised.
The sob cracked out of me before I could stop it. Violent. Raw. So hard it buckled my spine. I folded forward until my forehead hit the floor with a hollow, echoing thud. Pain burst across my skin, but it wasn’t enough. I needed more. Needed it to match what was breaking loose inside me.
I didn’t want comfort. Didn’t want arms wrapped around me, trying to soothe something that wasn’t just a wound—it was a crater. I didn’t want quiet reassurances or gentle touches. I wanted vengeance. I wanted blood. I wanted to scream until my voice gave out and someone finally fucking paid for what they took from me.
I hated them. All of them. The Dom Krovi. Alexei. The man behind the trigger. Whoever handed him the coordinates. Quinn, for calling it a mission. For letting him go. For playing chess with people like they didn’t bleed.
But more than any of them—I hated Carrick. For standing there in that room. For letting the words fall from his lips like facts instead of destruction. For not saving my brother.
