Page 132 of Piece You Saved

I swallow the panic sliding up my throat. Barbs make it painful to swallow, and I turn my attention to the gun in my hand.

After having spent most of the day practicing firing, it’s automatic now to make sure there are bullets in the chamber before I secure the safety.

It’s not the same gun I was practicing with before. This one is still a small black handgun, a Glock 19.

“Tonight calls for a special gun,” Aden told me when he placed it in my hand.

“Why is this one special?” I asked as I lifted it to discover what made it that way. But I think I knew.

Aden told me he had a monster Dariel killed, and after Dariel had killed his monster, he took Aden to the shooting range to learn how to defend himself.

And Dariel bought Aden a gun. His first. All so Aden could protect himself from more monsters in his future. A Glock 19.

“It protected me, and I think it will protect you,” Aden said, smiling wryly. “Given I have a wolf to do that for me. It’s yours.”

I never thought someone giving me a gun would make me cry for as long as I did.

It was stupid. I know it was stupid to cry about it, but there you go. Aden gave me a gun, and I cried like a baby. Or maybe it’s not so much the gun but what it represents: a way to kill my monster, to save myself and the men I love.

Aden is standing beside me, watching me check the gun. I won’t have time to do this when I have Rylan in front of me, so either there are enough bullets in this gun to kill him or there aren’t.

After securing the safety, I tuck it at the back of my sweatpants—where Rylan won’t see it—and cross over to the back door, where Dariel is waiting.

Dariel doesn’t look away from me as I stride closer, and I don’t look away from him. Feet away, I slow because he’s showing no signs of stepping aside to let me in.

He watches me with the same closed-off look in his eyes he had during breakfast, lunch, and a couple of hours ago when Aden said we should go inside for an early dinner.

Detective Morgan and Kade returned from checking out the bridge hours before, so I know nothing has changed with what’s happening tonight. And yet, Dariel is peering at me as if something has.

“What is it?” I ask as I stop a foot away. Closer than I would have stood before, but now I know his wolf isn’t trying to kill me, I’m not as afraid of him as I was.

He doesn’t respond.

I swallow the disappointment swirling in my gut. A part of me had hoped something had changed. The same part of me that hoped the man who picked me up off the sticky diner floor would be the man who would save me from an abusive dad I was desperate to escape.

It’s stupid that after everything—after Rylan—I would still cling to this impossible idea of happily ever after.

Happily ever after doesn’t happen for everyone else but me.

It doesn’t exist at all.

I edge around Dariel when he doesn’t move, preparing for what will happen now. I’ll take Sam’s place. Maybe I’ll find the perfect shot I need to put Rylan down forever. Maybe I won’t.

I probably won’t.

A large, hard hand closes around my right arm, halting me.

My eyes fly up and lock with Dariel’s gaze, expecting the same coldness I always find there, but the ice melted while I wasn’t looking.

“I never apologized,” he rumbles.

The smile I twist onto my lips feels like a grimace. “No need to do that anymore.”

I turn to walk away. He doesn’t release me. “You’ve given up.”

Even now I know what I have to do, even knowing there is no such thing as happily ever after, I still hope someone will swoop in and save me. Or that Dariel will pin me in this doorway forever, so we don’t have to go to the Lancaster Bridge. So I don’t have to trade my life for Sam’s.

It’s stupid, and yet I still do it.

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