Page 174 of Claiming Pretty

The Sochai guards thought they were breaking me. When they shoved my face against the cold iron bars, when their fists cracked against my ribs, when my blood slicked the damp stone floor beneath me—they thought they were inflicting pain.

But how could they know that physical pain was like a fading bruise?

Because the worst agony I’d ever endured had already hollowed me out.

I had lost her. Ava.

I had lost the love ofmylife. Because I wasn’thers.

I lay on the dirty cot in the corner of the cell, cradling my side where the worst of the bruising was, the moldy dampness of the walls pressing in.

A trickle of water from somewhere above kept time with the throb of my battered body.

My thoughts returned to her, as they always did. Not to her absence, but to the life she now had—happy and free.

That thought was my mantra. The thing that kept me alive for one more second. One more breath.

I told myself I could bear this.

My brother had borne it before me. He’d accepted this dark, damp fate, and now so would I.

It felt right somehow, sitting here where he had, staring at the same jagged cracks in the ceiling.

I remembered his resignation, his voice raw as he called my name while being dragged away. I’d replayed that moment so many times that my throat tightened every time.

This is your place, Ty. You were meant to be caged so they could go free.

If my message was received and if Ciaran was able to find what I suspected he might, I could be released from this cell.

But knowing that Ava had chosen Ciaran, it made little to no difference to me.

No matter where I was, no matter how free, if I wasn’t with Ava, I would remain in prison.

No bars or walls could trap me worse than the knowledge that she had chosen him.

I lay back on the ragged cot, letting my swollen eye drift shut. My body ached, but it was nothing compared to the numbness spreading in my chest.

I reached for the only relief I could find—memories of her.

The images flickered through my mind like a cruel slideshow.

Her smile illuminated by the blue light of the fridge, her silvery shoes swinging as she sat on the counter.

The gentle sway of her hair as the summer breeze carried in the scent of mint through the kitchen window.

The way her lips curved around a giggle as water from the glass in her hand teetered dangerously near the edge.

I could still hear her voice, soft and slurred from too much alcohol that night.

“Strawberries,” she’d said dreamily, plucking one from the bowl I offered her. “I want a strawberry patch.”

I’d fed her strawberries.

And she’d told me her dream life. Our dream life. Or at least at the time I thought it was.

The country house by the sea surrounded by a pine forest. The wraparound porch. The strawberry patch. The light and airy rooms with blue drapes. The antique writing desk beside a sunny window. A peaked ceiling in our bedroom. Her library filled with shelves like driftwood and couches the color of sea glass.

For years, I’d held on to that moment as if it were gospel. I’d built her a life in my mind, in stone, in reality. I’d built her a house by the sea, a dream life that would cradle her every want, every need.

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