Page 171 of Where Sinners Repent

“I love you,” I whisper against his lips.

He kisses me harder, growling against my lips. Kissing me until I’m breathless and my stomach curls with heat.

“Roxy,” he grits out, before biting my lip, soothing it with his tongue when he lets it free. “I’m not sure if I even know how to love. But what I feel for you... you’re in every fucking part of me. And I’m not ever, not for anything, letting you go.”

Tears are hot and heavy, dripping down my face.

“Sunshine,” I whimper.

Ash snorts at the nickname, but I pay him no attention. He slides something heavy into my hand, and I peer down to see Kaleb’s knife. I’m scared to look at Kai’s twin. I feel him standing beside Kai, but I’m a coward.

My fingers wrap tighter around the knife.

Without looking, I reach my hand out towards him.

“This is yours,” I murmur.

I can’t shake the fucking image of him thrashing against the chains, trying to get to me, when Isaac had a knife against my throat. The wrong angle of his shoulder and his battered body.

How can I ever face that?

“Are you fucking serious?” he grits out.

My hand stays reached out between us, frozen. I finally force myself to look at him, and I instantly regret it.

He looks terrible.

Bruising covers his face; one stains his under-eye, black and brutal. Dried blood coats half of his neck, and the way he carries his body is stiff with exhaustion.

My eyes drop, unable to take him in for another second.

His hand wraps around mine and pushes the knife back towards me.

I feel him simmering next to me, vibrating with an uncontrolled rage that isn’t like him.

“I’m so fucking angry at you,” he mutters.

I nod. “I know.”

It comes out watery.

“No, actually you don’t.”

I peek up at him through my lashes, focusing on the darkness of his eyes instead of his injuries.

“If you think I’m mad about the door, then you have no clue what I’m talking about,” he continues.

My face screws up, confused. “Then, what?”

His jaw clenches, eyes narrowing on me.

“You left. You left us. You didn’t come to us for help, and I get it, you did it for Maddy, but you fucking left.”

My lip won’t stop shaking, listening to his words. It feels like my heart is being squeezed by a vice, and it wants to explode.

“And then you fucking came back,” he growls. “Walked right into that place to save us. Do you have any clue what it did to me, to see you with that knife to your throat and not be able to do anything about it?”

“I had to,” I sob, shaking with the need to hold him. “I had to come back!”