Page 123 of Beautiful Ruins
I sat upright in bed before the front door even closed.
The air felt heavier.Thicker.Like something had followed him in.
My stomach tightened.
I slipped from the bed, bare feet brushing cool marble, and stepped into the hallway.The house was dim, only the low kitchen light burning downstairs.
I moved stealthily without meaning to.
When I reached the bottom step, I saw him.
Raze stood at the kitchen sink, back to me, shoulders rigid beneath his shirt.His elbows were braced on the counter.Water ran steadily over his fingers.
The water in the basin was pink.
Pink.
For a second, I couldn’t breathe.
He turned slightly, just enough that I saw the side of his face.There was something different about him tonight that looked a lot like resignation.
His sleeves were rolled to his forearms.There was dried blood at the edge of his cuff.A smear across his wrist.
My pulse thudded in my ears.
He hadn’t heard me yet.
I watched him scrub his hands slowly, methodically.Very… thorough.Like a man washing away the evidence of his misdeeds.
My throat tightened.
This was the world he belonged to.
Not the version of him that lay beside me at night with his hand warm on my hip.Not the man who brushed his thumb across my cheek when he thought I was asleep.This was the other side.The one that burned buildings down.The one that left bodies cooling in the dark.
He shut off the water.
Silence filled the room.
“Are you going to stand there all night,” he asked, almost to himself, “or are you going to come in?”
My breath caught.He hadn’t even turned around, yet somehow he knew I was there.
I stepped into the room.Each footfall felt deliberate.
He turned slowly then.His eyes found mine.There was no apology in them.No softness.Just something steady and unflinching.
“You’re bleeding,” I gasped.
“It’s not mine.”
That shouldn’t have comforted me.But somehow, it did.
I walked closer.Close enough to see the faint tremor in his fingers now that the task was done.Close enough to smell smoke on his clothes.
“Is it over, Raze?”
He held my gaze.
