Pieces of Us (Confessions of the Heart, #3)(100)

I tightened my hold around her wrist. “I told you it was over. I warned you to stay out of this with Izzy and me.”

“And you should know better than that. There’s a reason you and I are together. We fit. Belong. Didn’t you agree all those years ago?” It was pure seduction when she said it, like me going back to her again and again was because I wanted her and not out of obligation.

Out of this fucked up world we’d created.

She pushed up on her toes, venom in her tone. “I saved her, and I saved you. Remember? Now, she needs to go. Send her away, Mack, before it’s too late. She doesn’t belong here with you.”

“She’s not going anywhere. I’m finished with your games. I don’t give two fucks about that agreement. I was seventeen, and it was the worst decision I ever made. I’m finished covering for you. Finished turning a blind eye. It’s over, Clarissa.”

Disbelief lined her face. “You are such a liar, Detective Chambers.” She used my title like her own threat. “You have been covering your ass for all these years. You begged me, remember?”

My hold tightened. “I was doing it for her.”

Her face split in a malicious grin. “Really?”

“Really,” I spat.

“And what do you think changed? I would think you’d be all the more concerned about her since she has those two sweet little boys.” She cooed it the way she liked to do.

Old rage billowed from that dark, dark place. Fear and disgust and regret.

“And that sad, pathetic one with the disability.” She tsked. “Poor thing. Someone should have put him out of his misery.” Her expression was filled with forged innocence as she stared up at me, a dare on her face.

Urges slammed me. The need to wrap my hands around her throat and squeeze. Took everything I had to refrain from doing it. “That is my son.” I angled closer, darts of hatred flying low from my tongue. “They are my family. And I will do whatever it takes to protect them.”

She hiked up on her toes and ran her mouth up my jaw until she was whispering the threat at my ear. “I know you will. Nothing has changed, Mack. You owe me.”

It was just then that I felt it. The battered crash of energy against the floor. Deafening against the cold, stark-white laminate.

A shocked, horrified gasp ricocheted in the stagnant, sticky air.

I jerked to look over my shoulder. Izzy had been wheeled out, and the girl’s chin trembled as she struggled to process the sight in front of her.

Shame shook through my body. A landslide. A landmine.

“Isabel. It’s so nice to see you again.” Clarissa smirked, her cheek still pressed to mine, her claws firmly planted in my soul.





Thirty-One





Izzy





“Why didn’t you tell me?” I stood behind Maxon where he stared at a blank wall in my bedroom.

Bare morning light poured in through the window. I’d been released from the ER, and we’d just gotten back to a sleeping house.

During that whole time, I hadn’t stopped shaking.

Shakin’ and shakin’.

Tremors rose from a well in the middle of me and overflowed through every cell of my body. I still wasn’t sure if it was from the crash or from finding Maxon out in that hall with Clarissa.

The sight of the two of them from all those years ago had been engrained in my mind like a blemish.

Carved on my spirit like a scar.

Seeing them there like that had ripped it wide open.

Maxon roughed an agitated hand over the hair at the back of is head, flinching with my question.

He’d hauled her out of that hall so fast when he’d seen me standing behind them that I’d almost gotten whiplash. I was sure my achin’ head had throbbed more with the memories of the betrayal he’d meted when he’d broken my heart thirteen years before than with the actual injuries I’d sustained.

Of course, he hadn’t really cheated when I’d gone running all that time ago, unable to stay in this town any longer if it meant I’d have to see the two of them together.

He hadn’t really betrayed me in the common sense of the word.

He’d already told me he didn’t want me. That it was over. That we couldn’t be.

The problem was, my heart had known it had been a blatant lie.

He’d returned to my ER room with so much aggression and anger boiling in his body that I hadn’t been able to see straight. In it, he’d been silent. Raging without sound. Hovering over me like I might up and go missin’.

His terror palpable.

His fear real.

It made all of this so much harder—my need to run to him and ask him to wrap me up and hold me while I held him—at odds with this feeling that made me want to do a little raging of my own.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded again. “Have you . . .” I swallowed hard, barely able to get the words to form on my tongue. “Have you been with her this whole time? Are you still—”

God, I couldn’t even say it. Revulsion slipped across my skin like a sickness. A disease.

Maxon whirled around, disgust and horror gripping his expression. “God, no. Fuck, I would never do that to you, Izzy.”

My face pinched. “But you did. You did it before, and it destroyed me. Destroyed me in a way I’m not sure you fully understand.” I pressed my hands to my chest as if it could stop my heart from bleeding this pain.