Page 39 of Beautiful Ruins
“She won’t come out of her room,” Tone lashed out.
I didn’t look up from the file on my desk.“Who?”I couldn’t keep the disinterest out of my voice.
Tone’s stare sharpened.“Don’t do that.You know exactly who.”
I set the paper down carefully, as if patience could keep irritation from bleeding into my voice.“She’s in her room?”
“She’s been in her room,” Tone corrected.“And she looks like she wants to crawl out of her own skin.”
My jaw tightened.Guilt was a useful emotion when it didn’t turn into paralysis.But guilt wasn’t the same thing as responsibility, and Izzy had always struck me as the kind of woman who would take responsibility for things that were never hers to carry.
Tone stepped closer.“Raze,” she was softer now.“Let her go.”
I leaned back in my chair, eyes narrowing.“No.”
“Stop.”Tone planted her hands on my desk like she was about to deliver a verdict.“She’s not a threat.You know that.”
“You don’t know what I know.”
Tone’s mouth pulled into a line.“Then tell me.”
I held her gaze.
“Her boyfriend Nathan Azzopardi is a Nato family mule.”
Tone’s expression morphed—subtle, but real.Disgust.Anger.Then something closer to pity, which I hated seeing on her.
“She didn’t know, Raze.She couldn’t.This has devastated her.”
“She still ended up with him.”The words were cold, harsh, when all Tone was doing was defending her new friend.And all Izzy had been guilty of was falling for the wrong man.“And that’s what worries me.Not that she’s part of it—I know she’s not.It’s that she’s the kind of girl a man like that can circle back to when he’s desperate.”
Tone’s eyes hardened.“You think she’s that weak?”
“I think she’s human,” I corrected.
That earned a sharp, humorless laugh.“Says the man who built his life out of damage.”
I stared at her.
She stared right back, fearless as ever.Tone had never been afraid of my temper.She’d grown up with it.She’d seen me when I was younger—when violence came easier than grief and restraint.
“She’s ashamed, Raze.Not just upset.Ashamed.And she’s alone in that room thinking every bad choice she ever made led her here.”
I didn’t respond.
Tone softened her tone, but not her stance.“Let her go home.Let her breathe.She’s no danger to you.”
The words were too easy to agree with.That was the problem.
Because danger wasn’t always visible.Sometimes danger was attachment.Familiarity.Getting used to a presence in your house—someone’s laugh, someone’s footsteps, someone’s voice cutting through the stillness like it belonged there.
Izzy had done that without trying.
She’d been a disruption.A nuisance.A complication.
And somewhere between her stubborn honesty and the way she refused to tremble on command, she’d become…constant.Like a small, steady heat I’d started accounting for without noticing.
Tone watched my face like she could read the answer before I spoke.
