Page 178 of Without a Trace
“I was already gone the second I met you,” he said. “I just didn’t know it yet.”
Trace shifted behind me. Just enough to speak.
“If it’s between them and you,” he said, voice low, brutal, final. “I pick you. Every time. Even if it kills me.”
I leaned back into his chest and let the bottle slip from my fingers, landing in the sand.
No one said a word after that.
And maybe that was the answer, too.
Alden
Scarlett stood, slow and deliberate, the firelight catching the edge of my shirt hanging loose on her frame.
Her hair was a mess. Legs bare. Expression unreadable.
The bottle sat half-buried in the sand where shed dropped it. And the night felt… hollow without her at the center of it.
I followed her as she walked to her villa. Not close. Not far. Just enough to see the way she moved—steady, unbothered, like shed hadn’t just asked us to bleed.
I caught up when she hit the first step. Her hand hovered over the door panel.
“Didn’t mean to ruin your night,” she said, voice flat, brittle at the edges.
I shook my head. “Scar. You didn’t ruin anything. You just reminded us who’s in charge.”
That pulled the faintest twitch from her mouth. Not a smile. Something ghostlier.
“You always do that,” I added.
She looked over then. “Do what?”
“Wreck us. Quietly.”
The air thickened between us, heavy with everything we didn’t say.
“Why’d you follow me?” she asked.
I shrugged, then stepped up so we were eye to eye. “Because someone should walk you home. And because none of us are stupid enough to let you spiral alone.”
Her hand dropped from the door. She leaned back against it, hair sticking to her temples from the rain, my shirt clinging to her like it knew it didn’t belong to her—but wouldn’t dare protest.
“You think I’m spiraling?”
“I think you’ve been spiraling since the day we met you.”
I looked at her then—not the heir, not the chaos, not the flame—but the girl. The girl underneath it.
“You were never just a mission,” I said. “We were sent to watch you, yeah. But it stopped being about orders a long time ago.”
Her eyes flicked to mine. Still fire. But quieter now.
“And now?”
“I think if the Order asked me to walk away from you, I’d burn the whole thing down.”
Her body stilled—shoulders lifting with a breath she didn’t finish.
