Page 58 of Malice

She nods, blinking rapidly, fighting tears. Myra joins her, resting a steadying hand on her daughter’s shoulder, and they watch as Carter guides me to the door, his hand at the small of my back, shielding me.

The night air hits like a slap, cold, sharp, carrying the faint scent of exhaust and something greener, like rain on asphalt. Carter’s truck is parked close, and he opens the passenger door, his hand steady on my elbow as I climb in. The leather seat is cold against my back, and I press my bandaged palms to my thighs, feeling the dull throb beneath the gauze.

He circles to the driver’s side and slides in next to me, but doesn’t start the engine right away. Instead, he sits there, hands on the wheel, breaths deliberate and measured, eyes focused somewhere beyond the windshield.

I watch the muscle in his jaw work. The gauze on his knuckles has darkened further, the blood seeping through in uneven patches. His hands are still trembling, not the fine, involuntary shaking that’s been running through me, but something deeper, something structural, like his entire body is fighting to contain something too big for its frame.

“Carter.” I reach across the center console, my bandaged fingers finding his forearm. The muscle beneath his skin is rigid, corded with tension. “Talk to me.”

He turns his head slowly, and the look on his face—raw, stripped bare, the careful mask he wears for the world finally gone—makes something crack open in my chest.

“I heard you scream,” he mutters, the words coming out low and stripped of everything but the weight of them. “In the alley when that fucker yanked your hair. Your scream cut through me, and I was stuck inside that goddamn store.” He chokes on the words, fists clenched tight. “It was a fucking joke, the space between us twenty feet or even less. But it felt like a goddamn ocean, like I was fucking drowning trying to reach you before it was too late.”

His hand slips into mine, gently wrapping around my bandaged palm, and it sends a sting to my eyes. “I’ve never been that scared,” he says, his voice frayed and exposed. “Not in the ring, not ever. Nothing was like hearing you scream and not being able to reach you.”

I turn my hand in his, intertwining our fingers despite the pain. “But you did reach me. Both times. You were there.”

“Not fast enough.” His grip tightens. “The second time, if your dad hadn’t been there…”

“But he was. We all were. Together.” I lean over the console, pressing my forehead against his. “That’s what counts, Carter. Not the almost. What happened.”

He closes his eyes, and I sense something shift in him, not quite relaxing, but starting to release the iron grip he’s had since the alley. His warm, uneven breath brushes against my face, and I feel the thud of his heart where we touch.

“Take me home,” I whisper. “Our home, with the blue walls and the bookshelf waiting for us.”

Something flickers across his face—the barest hint of a smile, a ghost of the man I know. He turns the key, and the engine roars to life, the vibration buzzing through the leather and into my bones.

The drive is silent. It’s not the comfortable silence from our dinner date. It’s heavier, like two people who’ve been through something and are still figuring out how to deal with it. I watch the streetlights paint stripes across Carter’s face, highlighting his jawline, the shadows under his eyes, and the dried blood on his cheek.

My body shuts down. The adrenaline that’s kept me going since the first hand grabbed my arm is fading, leaving a deep exhaustion that weighs down my limbs. My eyes start to close, and I fight to keep them open, not wanting to miss the journey home, to the place Carter built with his hands and hopes.

We pull into the driveway, and the security lights flick on, flooding the place with harsh white light. Carter turns off the engine and sits, his hand on the key, eyes on the house.

“Perimeter’s set.” He nods toward the trees, where I can see the outline of one of my dad’s guys, standing watch. “Your dad wasn’t kidding about the watch.”

I nod, too tired to speak. Carter comes around, opens my door, and helps me out with steady hands. He wraps an arm around my waist, holding me up as my knees almost give out, and we head up the steps together.

Inside, the house is the same, clean, warm, with a whisper of the blue paint upstairs. Carter locks the door behind us with a series of beeps that sound like armor clicking into place.

“Bedroom,” he says, steering me toward the stairs. “You need rest.”

I don’t argue. The stairs feel endless, each one a fresh wave of pain in my knees. By the time we reach the landing, my vision blurs at the edges. Carter scoops me up without warning, and I gasp as my scraped hands press against his shoulders.

“I can walk,” I say weakly.

“I know.” He carries me to the bedroom, nudging the door open with his shoulder. “But you don’t have to.”

He sets me on the bed and strides through the room with focused efficiency, drawing curtains, turning on the lamp, and pulling back the covers. He slips into the bathroom and returns with a glass of water and two pills I recognize as the painkillers from Myra.

“Here, take these.” He slips them into my hand. I swallow them dry, too worn out to reach for the water. Carter settles next to me on the bed, his leg brushing mine, and starts carefully helping me out of my clothes. His fingers are soft as he slides my torn jeans off my scraped knees, his touch tender as he checks the wound under the compress on my scalp.

“The bleeding’s stopped,” he murmurs, gently brushing the edge of the raw spot. “But it’ll be sore for a while.”

“Everything’s sore right now,” I try to joke, but my voice is too thin, too raw.

Carter’s hands pause on my shoulders. He really looks at me, and what I see in his eyes steals my breath. Not the cold fury from the clubhouse, not the terror from the alley, but something quieter. Something like devotion, if devotion could wear a face built for violence.

“Let me,” he says, more a statement than a question. He eases me back against the pillows, pulling the covers to my chin with hands that tremble despite his efforts to steady them. Then he sits on the edge of the bed, angled toward me, his gaze never leaving my face.