Camden steps back into the room with a wrench.

“Give me your hand, pretty lady.” He’s still standing up, me kneeling before him, his index finger curled for me to crawl closer. I do.

“Pick a finger.”

I offer him my left pinkie.

“Oh. Come on now. Give us something you’d actually miss. How about your right hand’s index?”

“Fine,” I bite. Just take the whole arm and let me attend to my boyfriend, I want to scream.

When the cool iron touches my bony finger, I wince and look away, but when I feel it twisting against my skin, I think about Nate. How it would feel to have it all with him. The life he offered me. We would have it by now had I pushed away my thirst for revenge. I don’t even want Camden’s life anymore. It’s so hollow and meaningless, now that I know what real pain feels like.

Not the wrench. Physical pain is nothing.

Nate.

After my bones disconnect with a chilling sound, Camden produces a knife from his back pocket and cuts the skin surrounding it. The burn is agonizing. The pain is everywhere. I want him to tear my whole limb apart so that I don’t feel the throb between my fingers. I shake my head back and forth, biting back my scream.

“All done,” Camden says cheerily, tucking the wrench in his back pocket and fisting my ripped body part. “Remember, sweetheart, if you come after me, I will pluck the rest of your organs one by one.”

I collapse on my stomach and moan.

“Please, let me make one phone call. I have to take him to the hospital,” I groan in pain.

“Don’t take advantage of my kindness,” he taunts, laughing to himself. “Drag him down to the street. It’s only two floors. Goodbye, love. I wish I were strong enough to kill us both. But the truth is, I love you too much to see you go so young. Enjoy what’s left of your life, Prescott. I fully intend to enjoy mine.”

With that, he strides out of the room with my finger clutched firmly in his hand. I’m confused, but I don’t have time to dwell on my grave situation. Camden caught me, exposed and unprepared, armed with a muscle man and a plan, two things I didn’t have with me.

Still bleeding from where my finger used to be, I grab Nate by the hem of his jeans and drag him out of the room into the corridor. He’s heavy as hell, too tall for me to be able to maneuver him alone. I bang his limp body against the doorframe by accident, but he doesn’t even flinch. My arms burn and my legs shake under the strain of his weight, as I pull him out to the living room area of the apartment, one inch at a time. I catch Simon lying flat on the floor, his neck cut open. I drag Nate outside the apartment, but this is an old Victorian building. There’s no elevator.

The adrenaline that exploded in my veins subdues, and I feel the sharp pain in my hand and my thighs itching with my own urine. I have to hurry up before I faint.

Reluctantly, I round behind Nate’s head and grab him by his shoulders, each arm hooked under an armpit, and protecting his head. I slide him down the stairs, all while trying to pull him up to me so his head won’t take a hit. He looks so fragile, even with his huge size, with his eyes closed and that hole in his stomach.

The minute I get out of the building, I lose it. Every ounce of self-control evaporates as I yell for help. I grab strangers by the collar, staining them with my blood and sweat, begging them to call an ambulance, knowing that they are going to call the police too, but I’m far too gone to care. Trapped in a bubble made of insanity, I desperately want to burst. It’s ironic, my need to be strong for a man who is my only weakness.

I can’t lose him. Can’t let go of my peace.

Fifteen minutes later, we’re both at St. Mary’s Hospital.

Nate is being ushered to the operating room while I fight the staff who are trying to tend to my wound, demanding to join him.

The art of letting go. Camden thought he was bad at it, but me, I’m worse.

Five hours later, my hand is wrapped up and Nate is recovering in the other room. He lost a lot of blood and had to have a transfusion, but Simon didn’t manage to reach any of his inner organs. I was not allowed to stay by his side as I’m not next-to-kin, but the minute he wakes up, he asks for me. A nurse approaches my sad plastic table in the cafeteria and places her palm over my bandaged hand. “Your companion said he’d like to see Miss Cockburn?”

Nate is still subdued under mountains of morphine, but he squeezes my healthy hand when we meet. His lips are chapped and he has an IV drip attached to his arm.

“He’s dead,” I croak as soon as my ass hits the chair beside his bed. I’m too tired to cry. “Preston. Camden killed him.”

“Baby-Cakes.” His sucks in a shaky breath, stroking my palm in his. He doesn’t need to tell me he’s sorry. It’s all in his facial expression, wrapped in grief.

He knew this all along, I didn’t want to listen.

Our foreheads meet, and I take a whiff of my peace. Fragile and hurt, it’s still there. I used to look at Nate as someone invincible who could catch a bullet in his hand. Now I know that he is mortal, like me. It makes me love him even more.

“Tell me something beautiful,” his lips speak into mine. This time, I don’t have to search my brain for an answer. No words written by someone else can do us justice.

“Us,” I rasp. “We’re beautiful and ugly and broken. . .and whole.”