JOEM’S POV

“You already are.”

I would rather she had hit me. That would have been easier to take than the look in her eyes, the way she had stared at me like I was everything she feared and everything she used to trust.

‘And maybe I was.’ I told myself as I walked away because it was the right thing to do. Because if I had stayed, I might have said something I couldn’t take back.

By the time I reached my quarters, the adrenaline had burned out, leaving only silence. The kind that sits in your bones and hums beneath your skin. My hands were still shaking, my...