Page 92 of Twisted Steel

His eyes flash.“They came for you.”

“And you killed him.”

“Yes.”

“He was begging.”

Steel’s silence is worse than any answer.

I step closer, shaking with exhaustion and fury and fear that has nowhere left to go.“He was begging for his life.”

“He had a gun ten seconds before that.”

“He was down.”

“He was breathing.”

The words slap against my skin.Not shouted.Not cruel.Just a simple fact.Like breath is enough reason for Steel to finish what violence started.

I stare at him, and something breaks.Not love.Not want.But something more fragile.The lie I let myself build, that there’s a clean version of this.That Steel can be precise enough to make brutality easier to swallow.That because he waits for me, because he asks for words, because he touches me like I matter, the blood on his hands somehow becomes different.

It doesn’t.Blood is blood, and dead is dead.

Raven steps closer.“Harper.”

I shake my head.Her face softens, but she doesn’t touch me.She gives me the one thing everyone keeps trying to take.Space.

“Don’t let the shock make your choice for you,” she says quietly.

I laugh, but it breaks in the middle.“Is that what this is?Shock?”

“No,” she says.“But shock is riding shotgun.”

Steel’s gaze snaps to her, then back to me.I can feel him bleeding in a place I can’t see.

My voice drops.“I can’t do this.”

Steel goes very still, and the club fades around us.Mama M says my name softly, but I ignore her.

Steel’s voice is rough.“Harper.”

“No.”I shake my head.“I can’t stand here pretending this isn’t destroying something in me.”

“I protected you.”

“I know.”That’s the worst part.

His face changes.Pain, quick and brutal, before he buries it.I keep going because if I stop now, I’ll reach for him, and if I reach for him, I don’t know who I become.

“You save me by becoming the thing I hate,” I whisper.“I’m grateful, but eventually, I’ll hate myself for being grateful.And then I’ll look at you, and I’ll want you anyway, and that will turn into hate too.”

His eyes burn.The heat from our time in his room flashes through me at the worst possible time.His mouth on mine.His hand under my shirt.His voice saying beautiful, dirty things.And my body still remembers him while my hands are covered in another man’s blood.

That feels like betrayal of myself, of what I believe, of every life I have tried to save.

“Don’t leave,” he says, but there’s no command in it, and that hurts more because it’s almost a plea.

I close my eyes.“Steel.”