Page 191 of Carrick
“I need something,” she said. Every breath in the room stalled. Her gaze didn’t flicker. Not once.
“I need you.”
The silence was deafening.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she went on. Her voice didn’t rise, but it carried. “I don’t want sympathy. I don’t want you toask if I’m okay, because I’m not. He’s gone. And there’s no fixing that. No bringing him back.”
She shook her head slowly, as if warning herself not to spiral. “So I want to trade this pain,” she said, “for something I can live with.”
She looked at me like the decision had already been made. “I want you to take it.”
God help me, I’d never seen anyone burn so quietly. There wasn’t a single tear on her face. No trembling lip, no crack in her voice. Just heat—bare and volatile—simmering under skin stretched too tight to hold it. Her grief didn’t look like collapse. It looked like combustion. Like she’d already fallen and rebuilt herself out of ash, and now she was standing here, daring someone to stop her from igniting again.
My chest tightened. Because I knew this kind of pain. I’d seen it in war zones and back alleys and the hollowed-out faces of soldiers who’d come home to everything gone. But I’d never seen it in her. Not like this. And the fact that I was part of the reason she looked like this—that she had come to me to take the match and strike it against the ruin inside her—was enough to make something shift beneath my ribs. Still, I stepped forward. Just one step. A test. A question.
“You sure?” I asked, my voice low enough that it didn’t risk breaking anything that was already cracked.
She met my eyes. Nodded once. No hesitation.
With that single movement, she gave me her trust again—raw, scorched, and jagged. Not soft. Not sweet. Like a blade pressed into my palm, carrying the silent promise that she’d bleed if I asked her to. And that was enough.
I didn’t ask again. Didn’t press. Didn’t speak. I just moved. Crossed the space between us in three slow strides, the soles of my boots whispering against the floor. The room felt like it held its breath—like the walls themselves knew better thanto interrupt what was happening between us. Even the light seemed to dim, as if it understood this was a moment meant for shadows.
I stopped in front of her. Close enough to touch. Close enough to feel the heat radiating off the fury and grief she wore like armor.
“I’ll take care of you,” I said.
Five words. Simple. But they weren’t said casually. They weren’t a promise I made lightly. They were a vow. A battle cry. A funeral dirge and a benediction all at once. Because taking care of her didn’t mean soft touches and whispered reassurances. Not now.
It meant bearing the weight of everything she could no longer carry. It meant becoming the fire she needed—controlled. Contained. Offered on her terms. It meant not saving her from the edge, but standing with her on it.
She said nothing in response. Her silence was an answer all on its own. She turned away. And I followed—without hesitation, without fear—into whatever came next. Because she’d asked. Because she’d chosen me. And I would not—could not—fail her again.
Halfway up the stairs, she stopped. She looked back over her shoulder, and her voice came soft—just for me.
“I need help.” Her words hit harder than any scream ever could. She didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch.
“Will you help me?”
I didn’t hesitate. Not for a second. I gave her the only truth I had.
“Bet your ass I will, baby.”
37
Carrick
She entered barefoot,stripped of everything but grief. No makeup. No mask. Just the hollowed beauty of someone undone—wrecked, open, unshielded in the way only devastation allows. She didn’t speak, didn’t look at me. She simply stood in the threshold of the room we’d already desecrated together, but tonight the air didn’t crackle with tension or lust. It pulsed—low, steady, aching.
Not a challenge. Not a flirtation. A surrender. And I felt it hit me like gravity. She wasn’t approaching me to play. She was unraveling, walking into this space not to conquer it but to be stripped down further, to find some piece of peace buried in the wreckage.
I didn’t speak at first. Just watched her from the wall like a man staring into a storm he wasn’t trying to outrun. When I finally did, my voice was quiet but edged with command. “Bellamy.” Her head lifted—slow, deliberate. That was all it took. I met her eyes. Didn’t give her time to falter.
“Limits.”
That one word, low and grounded, landed between us like an anchor, and I watched it work on her—watched her spine draw long, her breath even, her body find its shape in the silence. Shestepped forward until only a few feet of air remained between us, and I felt it shift—felt the current spark from fragile to forged.
“No degradation,” she said, her voice sandpaper-soft. “Don’t make me feel worthless.” I nodded, once. No questions. No clarification.
