Page 96 of Claiming Pretty

Ty moved first, faster than I thought possible, catching her as her legs buckled.

I froze, guilt wrapping around my throat and choking me. I should have been the one to catch her.

Instead, I’d been too busy fighting with my brother to notice the woman I loved being pulled under.

Ty carried her effortlessly, like she weighed nothing, andI followed uselessly as he brought her into her bedroom and laid her on the bed.

When I stepped beside him, he didn’t look up at me. He didn’t even acknowledge that I was there.

His whole attention was on arranging Ava’s body.

He straightened her legs, adjusted her skirt over her thighs. He lay one arm at time at her sides and pushed her beautiful raven locks off her waxen face.

Ava, the woman I loved, was a prisoner in her own body, looking like a doll to be maneuvered this way and it made my stomach turn.

She began to whimper, her breath hitching, her eyes fluttering open and closed as though caught in a nightmare. Her chest rose and fell unevenly, her distress clear and growing.

“Fuck, Ty, make it stop,” I begged, panic ripping through me. I’d never seen her like this before. Never seen her so fragile.

“I can’t.” Ty’s face was calm but lined with something that looked suspiciously like pain. “She just has to get through it.”

“That’s bullshit!” I shouted, grabbing his arm and shaking him. “Fuck you, Ty. We need to help her. Do something.”

His gaze turned sharp, meeting mine with an intensity that stopped me cold, his voice low and dangerous. “You want me to help her?”

“Yes!” I yelled back, desperation clawing at my chest.

Ty turned back to Ava, still fighting the demons of her past, locked away in her body. “You might not want to be here for this,brother.”

Before I could ask why, Ty began to unbutton her top.

“Don’t you fucking touch her,” I snarled, wrenching Ty’s hand away.

With a move I’d never seen before and with shocking speed, Ty twisted my wrist back, my bone a mere flick away from snapping.

I grabbed his wrist with my other hand in turn and we strained against each other, locked in an impasse.

His eyes were black coals ringed with a sliver of ice in the soft light of Ava’s bedside lamp. “Do you want me to help her or not?”

I froze, every instinct in me screaming to keep fighting, to pull Ty away from her. To shove him against the wall and tell him to keep his fucking hands off her.

She was mine, damn it. Mine to hold, mine to comfort, mine to protect.

But as I stood there, torn between fury and helplessness, I knew that this was what they had done all summer.

Ty knew what to do, how to reach her, how to save her.

And that realization gutted me.

I hated that Ty knew how to bring her back. I hated that he understood her pain in ways I couldn’t, that he was the one she needed in this moment, not me.

It felt like a betrayal, even though I knew it wasn’t. Even though I knew this wasn’t about me, it still pained me to give in.

Another muffled sob tore from Ava’s lips and my chest constricted. The sound of her pain—it ripped me apart.

I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Okay!” The word burst from me like an explosion, myvoice hoarse with frustration and defeat. “Help her. Do whate— justhelpher.”

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