Chapter 57 You Lose
Grace didn’t understand why she was freezing.
It made no sense. She was pressed against Enzo’s chest, his arms wrapped around her, carrying her through the corridors of the pack house, and the man was practically a furnace. Heat radiated off him in waves. And yet she couldn’t stop shaking. Her teeth chattered softly despite herself, her fingers curling into the fabric at his chest like she could pull the warmth directly out of him if she just held on tight enough.
She told herself she wasn’t snuggling into him. She was simply trying not to fall. That was all.
But her nose pressed into the curve of his neck anyway, chasing the heat, and she heard him inhale slowly above her like he was the one trying to keep himself together.
Enzo didn’t say a single word. Not when he pushed through a door. Not when a pair of pack members spotted them in the hallway and stopped to stare, their eyes dropping to the fresh mark on Grace’s neck with expressions that shifted between disbelief and poorly disguised gossip. Not when he shouldered his bedroom door open and carried her inside.
He set her down on her feet and immediately stepped back.
Then he turned toward the door like he intended to walk right back out of it.
“Enzo—”
“Sleep it off,” he said flatly, not turning around.
Grace didn’t know what came over her. She didn’t make the decision consciously. One moment she was standing there swaying on her own two feet, the next she had crossed the space between them and wrapped both arms around him from behind, her cheek pressed flat against his back, her fingers locking together over his stomach.
“I’m freezing and you’re warm,” she muttered. The words came out slurred and small, like her mouth wasn’t fully cooperating with her brain. “You’re so warm...”
Enzo went completely still.
She was barely aware of how ridiculous she sounded. Some distant, functioning part of her brain recognized that this was almost exactly what had happened with Maddox, that she had clung to him the same way, shaking and desperate for contact she couldn’t explain. But Maddox had stayed. He had pulled her close and said nothing and let her take what she needed.
But Enzo was not Maddox.
She could feel the tension coiled through every inch of him, the way his jaw was set even though she couldn’t see his face. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet. Not gentle. Just quiet in the way that meant he was choosing his words carefully.
“Do you remember what you said to me?” he asked. “After the hotel. Do you remember what you called me?”
Grace’s fingers loosened slightly around him.
She did remember. She hadn’t let herself think about it too hard since, but she remembered.
A rebound. She had looked him in the eye and told him he was a rebound. Like he was something she had used and set down. Like he hadn’t mattered at all.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
She meant it. She didn’t try to explain herself or justify it or soften it with context. She just said it because it was true and because she didn’t have the energy for anything more complicated than the truth right now.
She felt him tense further at that. Which wasn’t the reaction she expected. It was almost like he’d wanted her to argue or make up some sort of excuse so he could leave.
He spun around so fast she barely had time to register the movement before her back hit the wall, his forearm braced beside her head, his body caging her in without touching her. His expression wasn’t angry exactly. It was something worse than being angry. It was the look of a person who had been waiting to say something for a long time and had finally run out of reasons not to.
“I don’t want your apology,” he said. “What good does it do me? What exactly does sorry fix?”
Grace looked up at him. The cold was still crawling through her, her shoulder still throbbing with each heartbeat, and the heat pouring off him was the only thing making any of this bearable. She wasn’t thinking clearly. She knew she wasn’t thinking clearly. But her hand came up anyway, slow and unsteady, and she pressed her palm against his jaw.
“I need you,” she said simply. It wasn’t strategic. It wasn’t calculated. It just came out because it was the most honest thing she could access right now.
Something moved behind his eyes. Then he pulled back. “No,” he said, and his voice was harder than it had been before, like he was reinforcing something in himself. “I don’t need you either. And the moment you’re well enough, you’re leaving this pack.”
He reached up to remove her hand from his face.
But then, she kissed him.
She didn’t think about it. She closed the distance before he could step back and pressed her mouth to his, and for exactly two seconds he didn’t move at all.
Then he made a sound low in his throat that wasn’t entirely a protest, and his body responded before the rest of him caught up because she felt it, the sharp intake of breath, the tension shifting into something different and considerably more dangerous.
Then he ripped himself back.
Both hands came up and he slammed her against the wall again, harder this time, his breathing unsteady, his expression furious in a way that had nothing to do with her and everything to do with himself.
“Don’t do that,” he warned, still frowning.
“Don’t leave.” Her voice cracked on it. She wasn’t performing. She wasn’t trying to manipulate him. She genuinely felt like if he walked out that door something in her chest was going to come loose and she had no idea what she would do about it. “Please. I think I might actually die if you leave. I don’t know what’s happening to my body and I’m so cold and I just—I want to hold you.” She pleaded. “You don’t have to forgive me. Hell, you don’t even have to like me. You’ve already saved my life twice.”
His expression flickered. “You don’t even know what you’re saying right now,” he said, but the edge in his voice had softened by a fraction.
“I know exactly what I’m saying.”
She could see him wavering. Could see it in the way his eyes moved over her face like he was looking for the lie in it and not finding one. His body was betraying him just as badly, she could tell. Whatever the mark had done to her it had done something to him too, his jaw was tight, his hands were braced against the wall on either side of her like he needed something to hold onto, and there was a fine tension running through all of him that looked less like anger and more like a man standing at the edge of something.
Grace stepped away from the wall. She reached up slowly and pulled her top over her head.
Enzo didn’t move. Didn’t look away. Every muscle in him locked.
She crossed the space between them one step at a time and pressed her bare chest against his, her arms coming up around his neck, her mouth close to his ear. “Hold me,” she whispered.
The sound that came out of him was almost pained.
He was torturing himself. She could feel it in every rigid line of his body, in the way his hands hovered at her sides without touching, in the way his breathing had gone uneven and harsh. He had wanted to punish her with her own need, had wanted to stand unmoved while she fell apart, and it had backfired spectacularly because he was already burning alive and she had just walked directly into the flame and pressed herself against it.
Whatever happened next, one thing was increasingly obvious.
Enzo was going to lose this fight with himself.