Page 112 of Cold Bastard
A true bastard.
“We will all be there, King,” Morpheus said when I refused to speak.
I didn’t respond. Couldn’t. My throat was too tight. My chest was too heavy. The weight of it pressed down on me like a physical thing, crushing the air from my lungs.
Travis was dead, and I hadn’t even had time to say goodbye.
As the meeting continued, I refused to think about my brother, choosing to stare off into nothing as my mind turned to the woman upstairs in my room.
Alexandra.
I warned Morpheus that his course of action would break her, and I was right. My woman was broken. Completely, utterly broken. The fight inside her had vanished, leaving only a shell of the woman she used to be. Nothing I said or did seemed to penetrate the wall she’d erected.
I replayed everything in my mind. From the moment I laid eyes on her to the second I turned my back on her, trying to think of something, anything I could do or say to get the stubborn woman I fell in love with back. But even I knew that once something was broken, it could never be put back together the same way. Carver told me I needed to give her time. But I knew time wasn’t on my side. Something had to give, and soon, before I lost her forever.
The presidents were still talking, coordinating logistics, discussing Arizona’s location in Rapid City, debating whether to send a joint team or let the Brotherhood handle it alone. Morpheus was in his element, calm and strategic, laying out the plan as if he was discussing the weather. But I wasn’t listening. All I could think about was Alex. Upstairs. Alone. Staring at nothing the way I was staring at nothing now.
You did this to her.
The thought was a knife twisting in my gut, sharper than anything Scythe had done to my leg.
You broke her. You turned your back on her when she needed you most. You chose the club over her.
No, that wasn’t true. I hadn’t chosen the club. I’d chosen survival. I’d chosen to prove to Morpheus that I could still be trusted. That I wasn’t compromised. That I could still be the brother they needed. But in doing so, I’d destroyed the one person who ever made me feel like I was more than just a monster.
Fuck.
“Nano.”
Morpheus’ voice cut through the fog in my head. I looked up to find him staring at me, his expression unreadable.
“You good, brother?” he asked quietly.
I nodded, even though it was a lie. “Yeah. I’m good.”
He didn’t believe me. I could see it in his eyes. But he didn’t push. Just turned back to the screen and continued the conversation, and I sat there, staring at the monitors, feeling the weight of everything I had lost pressing down on me like a fucking avalanche.
Travis was dead.
Alex was broken.
And I was alone.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Alex
The wall was white.
Not clean white. Not fresh white. The kind of white that had yellowed at the edges where the paint met the ceiling. There was a crack running from the corner down toward the window, thin, barely visible, but I’d traced it with my eyes so many times in the last two days that I could draw it from memory.
The light came through the window in a slant. Afternoon, probably. Maybe morning. I didn’t know anymore. Time had stopped meaning anything. The sheets were black. Soft. Egyptian cotton, maybe. I didn’t care. They smelled like him, like leather and smoke and something darker I couldn’t name. I lay on top of them, not under them, wearing one of his T-shirts and nothing else.
I hadn’t moved in hours. Maybe longer. I breathed. In. Out. In. Out. That was all. No thoughts. No feelings. Just the mechanical function of lungs expanding and contracting, keeping a body alive that didn’t particularly want to be.
The door opened.
I heard it. The soft click of the latch, the creak of hinges that needed oil. Footsteps crossed the room. Lighter than Nano’s, softer than any of the brothers’. I didn’t turn my head. Didn’tblink. I just kept staring at that crack in the wall, tracing its path with eyes that felt dry and gritty.
