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Noir wipes blood from his mouth with his thumb.
“You always were smarter than people gave you credit for.”
Dagger slams him into the railing again.
“Why?”
Noir’s smile thins.
For a second, something ugly and old flashes through him.
Grief maybe.
No.
Not grief.
Rot.
The kind of pain that’s been sitting too long, growing teeth.
“Because you ruined everything first.”
The words land sharp.
Dagger stills.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
Noir’s gaze slides past him to me.
Finally.
Fully.
I wish he hadn’t.
Because there’s nothing soft there now.
No pretty lie.
No obsession wrapped in tenderness.
Just a stranger wearing the face of the man who held me against him hours ago and told me I was his drug.
“I loved Brynn,” Noir says quietly.
My lungs stop working.
The apartment seems to tilt beneath me.
Dagger’s fingers tighten around Noir’s shirt.
“No.”
Noir laughs softly.
“Yes.”
