Page 23 of Criminally Yours

Liss squeezed her arm. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me anything. But I’m here if you want to talk.”

“Thanks.” Millie swallowed the lump in her throat. “Something happened between us one night… It changed my life. The next morning, I had to leave, but we promised to talk properly about our relationship and future when I returned later that day. While I was gone, he told my mum he was leaving for good. It was like he couldn’t stand to see me again.”

“He didn’t wait to talk to you?”

Millie shook her head. Her voice cracked. “I never saw him again. He was my best friend and then became a stranger.”

“What a piece of shit.”

Millie flinched. He was, and yet there had been no signs he was the kind of guy to do something like that. He wasn’t closed off then like he was now.

Liss fixed her with a look. “How did you get over that? Because I’m telling you now, I’m not sure I could.”

Millie’s body sagged as Liss wrapped her arm around her.

A thud sounded near the doorway, and she whipped her head in its direction. She gasped at the sight of a blank-faced Strike. The blood had drained from his face, and there was a slight tremor in his fingers where his hands pressedagainst his jeans.

Shame snapped at her as he cleared his throat twice and studied the room before he met her stare.

“Breakfast will be ready in thirty minutes,” he murmured, like all energy had been torn from his body.

“Okay,” she croaked.

He gave a brief nod before walking away. Suddenly, he turned back, his eyes crinkled at the edges as they sharply met hers. “From the bottom of my heart, I’m sorry. I’ll never forgive myself for what I did.”

His departure from the room ripped open the crack that had formed when he’d left years earlier.

“Wow,” Liss replied, even her hands were trembling.

“Yeah,” Millie added. A lump like a rock in her gullet refused to disappear, and her pulse raced faster than when she’d run for the train the day before. “But a sorry can’t repair the past. Nothing can.”

CHAPTER 10

Strike

Strike gripped the barbell. It was too heavy, and he shouldn’t be doing this alone, but the sight of Millie talking to Liss, her eyes dark with grief and her face contorted with pain from what he’d done, made his heart so heavy, he had to do something.

The fear of what might happen if he didn’t punish himself with weights terrified him.

This was the only way he could reduce his anxiety.

But it wasn’t enough.

Nothing worked.

He added on another weight as he fought his memories.

Self-hatred was like acid pouring down his throat, eating at the parts that the past years hadn’t already destroyed.

He didn’t let emotion in, and yet now, he was struggling to stop it from crashing through his walls. Planning was another way he might regain control, but his head was so fuzzy from anxiety that he couldn’t assess every risk and how he would combat them.

Panic attacks were a thing of the past, but anxiety drove his lifting and dropping of the barbell. He’d ruined Millie’s life. Itwas his fault she was stressed, unhappy, and didn’t have friends.

Sadness cluttered the empty space in his heart. He’d experienced too much and developed unrelenting self-hatred. Dominating everything and everyone around him helped lessen the constant anxiety and stop bad things from happening again.

He focused on the movement of the barbell and attempted to calm his breathing, but terror made him want to yell and throw the weight.

“You’re a piece of shit. They were right. You’re the worst kind of person. No wonder she doesn’t want to know you.”