Page 43 of My Secret Santa Mason

“You didn’tknow?” I snapped, my voice sharp and cutting. “You didn’t know that posting pictures all over social media, putting your life on fucking display, was going to bring them here?”

“Well, obviously not,” she shot back. “It’s not like I was doing itso thatthey could come here and find you, you know. I mean, I didn’t evenknowyou before the drawing.”

I shook my head. “I was supposed to be able to trust you.”

“I told you, it was an accident,” she countered. Her fire was impressive, her fearlessness in standing up to me would have turned me on a second ago. But now, I was so fucking pissed. All I saw when I looked at her was another enemy.

“And that’s supposed to change anything?” I asked in a cold voice. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

She glared at me, her anger matching mine, but her eyes shimmered and then welled with tears.

I didn’t care. Not now that everything had gone to shit all around me.

Her lip trembled, and she really looked like she felt awful, but none of that would fix this mess. I found my clothes, pulling them on item by item.

“I never meant for any of this to happen,” she said in a hoarse voice.

“Sorry?” I growled, spinning around after pulling my shirt over my head, my hands clenched around my jacket. “Do you have any fucking idea what you’ve done? Wallace isn’t just some guy. He’sdangerous. He’s been after me for years, and now,thanks to you, he’s here. Right on my goddamn doorstep, with Viktor in tow. I’m dead, thanks to you.”

She flinched, tears streaming down her cheeks, but I was too far gone to care. All I could think about was how I’d let my guard down. How I’d let her in. And now, everything I’d worked to protect was crumbling around me. Because of her.

“We can do something about it,” she said. “We can contact someone. The sheriff, Tanner—”

“Do what?” I spat. “Don’t you dare make it sound like this was just something I could have cleaned up years ago and been done with it. I live my life like I do for a reason. I keep people away because that’s the only way this works.”

I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on my boots.

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” she tried. She’d swallowed her crying but her cheeks were still wet.

She shifted toward me but I jerked away and stood without tying my laces. I couldn’t handle her touch right now when I felt like the ground had just been ripped out from under me.

“It’s over,” I said, my voice cold and final. “I can’t trust you.”

“What?” She gasped. “I just told you everything!” She angrily wiped her tears away.

“Not until after we fucked,” I spat. “You just had to get in there one last time, didn’t you?”

She looked horrified at what I implied.

“I thought you were different from the rest of them. But you’re exactly the same, aren’t you?”

“That’s not fair!” she cried out.

I turned and walked out the door, slamming it behind me, and stomped across town and into the trees.

I didn’t look back.

Not when the one person I should have been able to trust had just destroyed everything.

19

CAMI

Istared at the packed suitcase sitting on the bed, and I felt sick to my stomach. I hadn’t thought I would be on the road again so soon. I’d thought I found a place to stay, a place I could call home after everything had come crashing down before.

But I guess we should never get too comfortable, right?

Apparently I never learned my lesson. I always thought I could be happy, and then I got burned.

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