“You won’t need to bludgeon anyone to death with it, because you’re not gonna be out of my sight. Until further notice, you’re on house arrest.”

If anything, Lacey looks relieved by this news. Does she give a fuck about being told what to do? Nope. Does she mind that I’m restricting her to the insides of these four walls? That’s a negative, Ghost Rider. She only cares that I’ll be around for her to lean on if she needs me.

Sloane on the other hand…Sloane’s gonna be fucking pissed when I tell her she’s on lockdown, too. The DEA doesn’t know where the warehouse is. It’s better if she stays here and keeps her head down until I can figure out this whole shitty, messy situation.

I need to buy more fucking food. I slam the fridge door shut—where the hell is Michael? He usually sorts out things like that. He doesn’t go do grocery shopping for me; that would be a complete waste of his unique talents. No, but he normally does arrange for someone else to stock up, though. I shoot him a text—Supplies—and get an instant ping back.

On it.

Lacey seems content enough munching on her bowl of cereal. I leave her and head back toward my room, wondering if Sloane’s still going to be in there, half naked, getting ready. My dick stirs at the thought. I’ve always liked sex, but this? This is different. There’s no naked woman standing in front of me, offering herself up to me on a platter. There’s just the memory of the way Sloane feels and tastes and smells, and it’s enough to make me fully hard.

“—Wouldn’t be fair.”

The sound of her voice stops me in my tracks. She’s not in my room at all; she’s in hers, and the door is wide open. Her back is to me, beaded with water from the shower. She’s talking to someone on the phone. I can hear the buzz of an angry voice coming from her handset. Sloane’s shoulders are tense, drawn up an inch around her ears as she listens.

“Oliver, I never threw it back in your face. I—” She pauses. And then, “It’s far more complicated than that. It’s not about him. Not all of it.”

There’s more intense buzzing coming from her phone—I can’t make out specific words—and Sloane’s breath catches in her throat. There’s silence, and then she finally speaks. Her words are the kind made to stop a man’s heart. They’re the kind of words that have started wars and burned the world to the ground.

“I can’t say that. I—I’m in love with him.”

I pull in a sharp breath; I can’t even fucking help it. It feels as though I’ve just been belted in the stomach with a battering ram. Sloane must hear—she spins around, and every last drop of color drains from her face. We stare at each other for a moment, and then she whispers into her phone. “No. There’s nothing more to say.”

She slowly lowers the phone from her ear and cancels the call, looking down at the screen and biting her lip. I just stand there like a fucking moron, waiting for my body to catch up with the screaming inside my head. What. The. Fuck? What the fucking fuck? She loves me? I’m assuming she was talking about me. She hasn’t been hanging around with any other guys since we began playing this game.

“You weren’t supposed to hear that,” she says softly under hear breath.

“I can imagine.”

She looks up at me, and for the very first time ever I think there are tears in her eyes. She’s strong. When she was dealing with me in the beginning, when she slept with me, when I promised to help her get Alexis back, heading out to Julio’s—through none of that did I ever see her cry. But fuck me if she isn’t on the brink of breaking down right now. I curl my hand into a fist, desperate to smash it into something.

“Don’t you want to say anything?” she asks quietly, her voice shaking slightly. “I’d have thought you would have had plenty of practice at berating silly women who let themselves get too close to you.”

Pain. I need pain. Right now. I need to feel something strong and constant that will wipe away this rushing, roaring inside my head. “No. They were smart, Sloane. None of them were ever stupid or unfortunate enough to fall in love with me.” I turn and hurry back the way I came down the hallway. I have to get out. I have to get the fuck out of here. I can’t…I need to smash something into tiny pieces, or it’s me who will be in bits. Seriously, I feel like I can’t even fucking breathe right now. She loves me. She loves me, and I will break her. I will ruin this. I will lose this. I will hurt her and I can’t be trusted, and I am too fucked up to cope with the thought of what will happen if she realizes all of this and leaves. These are the things that push me away from her. I can’t…I wish I hadn’t fucking heard that. I shake my head, trying to empty the thoughts out, but all I hear are those words: I’m in love with him. They won’t stop repeating themselves, and the sick fucking thing is the reason I can’t shake them is because I won’t let them go. I’m running scared, but the confession…it makes my heart feel like it’s on fire. Fuck!

“Zeth?”

I don’t turn around.

“Zeth!”

I don’t stop walking.

I can’t.

I grab up my leather jacket from the back of the couch; I shove my arms into the sleeves, nearly tearing it apart at the seams when I can’t wrestle it on right away. Lacey says something I don’t hear, and then I’m leaving the apartment and slamming the door behind me.