Back to Me (Book Three ✓)

forty-four

BEAU

Jesus Christ.

Using one arm to shield Emma and Maggie behind me, I raise the other to Zoey, palm facing out to her as if in surrender.

Car doors slam behind us and I immediately feel the presence of our security detail, their weapons raised and pointed at Zoey.

Eyeing the blood seeping through her shirt, I lock my gaze on Emma's kitchen knife, the one Zoey's holding to the inside of her wrist, hard enough that there's a little prick of blood beginning to form.

Emma wasn't bleeding, was she?

"Zoey," I try to sound steady, like I know what I'm fucking doing. Her eyes never leave mine, despite the security guards beginning to close in. "Zoey, put the knife down. No one has to be hurt."

My heart pounds in my ears, adrenaline making everything too fast and too slow at the same time.

All I can think is... Emma. Maggie. Emma. Maggie.

They have to be okay.

Emma's hand slips into my back pocket, removing my cellphone. Her voice is almost inaudible as she murmurs to the police on the other end.

Smart. With the security guards and the police here, they will be fine. Everything will be fine.

I put my hand on the security guard's closest to me shoulder, hoping he'll let me talk Zoey down before he shoots her.

He eyes me warily, but nods, standing right by my side, his weapon still drawn.

For what she's done to Emma, what she could've done to Maggie, I briefly consider letting them get her. Letting them destroy her, end this threat to my happiness. My family.

Something like a conscious makes me feel guilty for even thinking the thought.

Because she has a son, my nephew. A fiancé, one who called me this morning having no idea where she was or why she hadn't come home to watch their child while he went to work.

"I'm already hurt." Zoey whimpers, her head tilted to the side, dark eyes vacant as they bore into mine.

"I know," I glance down to the wound, the blood dribbling down her leg and onto Emma's front porch. "We'll go to the hospital, get it checked out."

And get a psych evaluation or something, while we're at it.

How could I not have seen this? How could Beck not have known?

"No, Beau." Zoey shakes her head, gripping the knife tighter in her fingers, the blood beginning to pool where the blade meets her skin. "They can't help me, everything hurts."

I inch forward, despite Emma's fingers grasping at my shirt.

I watch the knife closely, carefully. She might wield it at any moment. But as long as it cuts through me, not Maggie, not Emma... then I think I'll be okay.

I want Zoey gone, out of our lives forever. But I don't want her dead. Holding Maggie... how would I ever tell her something awful happened to her mother, if something were to happen, if the roles were reversed?