Annelly

“He was last seen yesterday afternoon, when he was dropped off at the campus apartment. He knew he was to call the security team for an escort if he planned to leave, but he never did. Security feeds show him walking out of the building alone around 9:30 last night. He never returned. His phone was found shattered six blocks away. To this point, the team onsite hasn’t been able to locate him.”

The room tilts.

Not because I move—but because the oxygen vanishes all at once, sucked through some unseen crack in the floor.

“As of forty minutes ago, our counterparts in Philadelphia filed a missing persons report with the local authorities.”

And then, like the universe itself cues it, every head turns to look at James.

Every single one of them holds their breath.

Waiting. Watching. Bracing.

James doesn’t react at all.

And that stillness—that awful, unnatural, suffocating stillness—is somehow more terrifying than anything. Because I’ve seen James angry. I’ve seen him scared. I’ve seen him hurting. Anxious. Bleeding.

But this?

This frozen, hollow, soul-collapsing quiet—

It feels like watching a man stand on the edge of a cliff, right before he decides to fall. Right before he surrenders. Right before he resigns himself to letting the world swallow him whole.

And then, just as I reach for him, he moves.

A sudden, violent burst like something inside him has snapped loose.

The chair he’d been sitting on goes flying, crashing against the wall with a splintering crack. Everything within reach follows. Paper. Coffee mugs. Files. The laptop nearly hits the ground, but Dominick lunges and catches it midair.

The room erupts.

“James—” several voices call out, but it’s already too late.

He’s across the room in seconds, ripping open the weapons cabinet, snatching his holster, his keys, the handgun he hasn’t touched once since we arrived at the safe house. And then he’s moving toward the door like a man on a mission, his expression carved from fury and terror in equal parts, daring anyone to try stopping him.

Zeb lunges first, grabbing his arm, but James jerks back with a force that rattles my bones.

“Move.” It isn’t a shout. It isn’t even a command. It’s a feral, gutted sound—raw in a way I’ve never heard from him.

Dominick is there in an instant, braced in front of the exit. James slams into him shoulder-first, hard enough to make the walls shake.

And then everything happens at once.

James’s fists are flying.

Zeb and Dominick are grappling with him—not to hurt him, but to restrain him, contain him, keep him grounded—but James fights like a man possessed. A drowning man. A man willing to tear apart the world, including the people he cares about, if it means getting to his brother.

Deep down, I know he isn’t trying to hurt them. He’s just trying to get to Tyler. Trying to save the only family he’s ever had.

But all I can see—all my brain registers—is the violence. The tension. The collision of bodies. The sickening thud of fists meeting flesh.

And the blood…

Zeb’s split lip.

Dom’s torn brow.

James’s knuckles—old wounds ripped open yet again.

And in James’s face, there isn’t a single trace of the man I know. His expression is monstrous—twisted in rage and agony and terror. His disregard for the men he calls his brothers would be terrifying… if I didn’t understand exactly what this is.

This is James afraid.

This is James destroyed.

This is James the big brother, terrified and unraveling, desperate to save the boy he swore to protect with his life.

“Calm the fuck down,” Dominick grits out, arms locked around James’s torso as he tries to haul him back.

James doesn’t calm. If anything, he fights harder—like a drowning man who thrashes more violently the closer he comes to the surface. His movements are wild, frantic, fueled by a terror so blistering hot it has nowhere to go but outward.

“Let me go!” he roars, twisting, shoving, trying to tear free. “He’s out there—he’s out there alone—he needs—I need—”

His voice breaks under the weight of a truth he cannot speak.

Dominick braces harder. Zeb digs in. And still James pushes, muscles trembling, desperation pouring off him in waves I can feel from across the room.

My chest seizes. My throat closes. My body starts shaking without my permission as I watch in horror, powerless to stop any of it.

“James—” Zeb warns, harder now. “Pull it together. This isn’t the way. You are not going anywhere without—”

James snaps forward in a violent lunge that sends Dominick stumbling. With no other choice, Zeb and Dom drive him to the floor with a sickening thud, pinning him down as he thrashes beneath their weight.

The sounds that rip out of him—wounded, furious, terrified—stab straight into my heart.

Suddenly, I can’t take it.

I can’t watch him tear himself apart. I can’t watch them hold him down. I can’t watch him suffer for one more second.

“Stop!” I scream. The word rips out of me—shrill, raw, pitched with all the anguish shredding me alive.

The effect is instant.

James freezes mid-thrash.

Mid-breath.

Mid-fight.

He just stops.

His chest heaves once—twice—shuddering. And then his eyes lock on mine, wide and wild, like he’s begging me to understand something even he can’t articulate.

Zeb loosens his grip first—slow, cautious—his hand still braced on James’s shoulder in case he surges again. Dominick shifts back as well, one knee planted beside him as he gradually releases pressure.

The only sound in the room is the three of them catching their breath.

Though he’s free, James doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Doesn’t even breathe like a normal person.

He just lies there, staring at me from the floor. Those eyes that were wild a second ago—now empty. Vacant in a way that sends terror slicing clean through my chest.

He looks like a man who’s just realized his world has been irreparably broken. Like someone beaten. Like some vital piece of him snapped loose and is now hanging by a single, fraying thread.

“James,” Zeb says quietly, hesitant, like he’s afraid one wrong word will detonate him again. “You with us? You good?”

Nothing.

James doesn’t blink.

The silence stretches, tight and unbearable. Even Ben, Lucas, and Owen—still on the computer screen—sit frozen, worry etched into every line of their faces.

Like a moth drawn to flame, I take a small step forward, my body pulled by something instinctive and aching. 

“James…” My voice cracks. “Can you please look at me?”

He does. 

Slowly. Mechanically. 

His eyes shift toward me, focusing for the first time like my voice just punched a tiny hole through the fog. And the moment our eyes lock… something in him changes.

Unfortunately, not in the way I hoped.

Instead of softening, his entire posture tightens—a brutal, jarring snap of tension that pulls his features taut with something sharp and blistering.

It stops me cold.

As he pushes to his feet, Zeb and Dominick rise with him, bodies tense, ready to restrain him again. But it’s wasted effort because this time, it isn’t them he’s fighting.

No.

This time the fury—the terror-driven, bone-deep panic—is pointed straight at me.

When he speaks, he sounds nothing like the man I love.

“Don’t even think about it.”

There’s no wobble in his voice now. Just raw fury honed to a blade. His chest heaves once, and then he’s pointing at me, eyes blazing with a rage born out of terror so big it eats a person whole.

“Don’t you fucking dare, Annelly. Don’t even think about going back to him,” he growls, the sound low and vicious, ripped straight from his chest. “I swear to God—if you try, if you even move toward that door—”

He steps closer like he’s ready to stop me with his bare hands, his voice edged in violence born only from fear.

“I’m not letting him take you,” he snaps, voice cracking with anger, not pain. “I’m not letting you throw yourself at that motherfucker. I’m not losing you, too. Not now. Not fucking ever.”

He’s shaking with it—pure, blinding, desperate rage—and when Zeb presses a hand to his chest to stop him from coming closer, James whips toward him like he’ll tear through anyone standing between us. 

Then, as if realizing Zeb is only protecting me, he forces himself still. Barely. Choosing instead to issue a warning.

“If she so much as looks at that fucking door,” he spits, voice booming through the room, “you restrain her. Do you hear me? You tie her the fuck down if you have to. I don’t care if she fights. I don’t care if she screams. I don’t care if she ends up hating me. She. Does. Not. Leave.”

Then his eyes cut back to me—burning, consuming, wild.

“She doesn’t go to him,” he snarls. “She doesn’t get to fucking try. I won’t let her.”

It’s dominance, not malice. 

It’s terror masquerading as control. 

But my body doesn’t know the difference.

After Victor…

The second his voice hits that pitch, that command, something cold and familiar slams into my spine. My breath stutters. My palms go icy. And before I can stop myself, my feet shift back—a reflex I hate, a reflex carved into me by a man who weaponized fear just like this.

And I see the exact moment James registers it.

His face goes white. 

His chest caves like something vital breaks loose inside him. 

And his eyes, already broken, shatter completely.

But in the state he’s in, he doesn’t apologize. He doesn’t reach for me. He doesn’t even try to fix it.

He can’t.

Zeb steps toward him. “James—”

But James doesn’t hear him. His gaze stays locked on me, devastation etched into every line of his face.

And then—he turns away.

No warning.

No words.

No explanation.

He just pivots, shoulders tight, jaw clenched, and walks toward the door like he’s desperate to escape the room… or maybe himself.

“James—” Zeb tries again, but only with his voice.

James doesn’t stop. Not until Dominick steps in front of him, hand raised.

“Give me your gun.”

For a heartbeat, no one moves.

The room holds its breath.

Then, to my utter shock, James pulls the weapon from his holster and hands it over without a word. And with that, he walks out, slamming the door behind him with a force that vibrates through my chest like an aftershock.

I stumble forward, breath catching in my throat as every cell in my body screams at me to go to him. My hand flies to the doorknob—ready to chase him into whatever darkness he’s running toward.

But Zeb steps in front of me.

“Annelly.” He sets a steady, grounding hand on my shoulder, his voice unbearably gentle. “Let him go, Nell.”

My heart fractures.

“But—” The word barely escapes before my throat closes. “Zeb, he—he needs—”

“I know.” His gaze softens in a way that guts me. “But you can’t reach him right now. None of us can. He needs a minute to work through this on his own. Only when he’s ready can we help him.”

I want to argue. To insist he’s wrong. But the lump in my throat won’t let me.

Because he’s right.

God… I know he’s exactly right.

But then why does it feel like I’m abandoning him when my hand falls away from the door?

I move to the window instead. The same window where, just an hour ago, I watched him preparing the soil for the daffodils. He’d been so light then. So warm. Smiling at me with so much love it radiated through the glass.

And now—

James storms down the porch steps, movements sharp and uncoordinated, driven purely by instinct and agony. He reaches the treeline, and there… he simply breaks.

His body buckles inward, collapsing as if the invisible weight he’s been carrying finally crushes through him. He falls to his knees—hard—gravel skittering beneath him in a scatter of sound that cracks straight through my ribs.

My breath lodges painfully high in my chest as a raw, screaming sob tears out of him.

And I stand there, helpless, watching the man I love—the fighter who never quits, who would go to the ends of the world to protect the people he loves—give up, fold in on himself, and fall apart on the forest floor.

❤️ Can’t wait for more? I’ve got you… 👇🏼

REAM followers are already two chapters ahead! 

And the best part? Following me there is totally FREE.

Find me at: (https://reamstories.com/arianaclarkauthor)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NEW CHAPTERS post at 3:00 PM EST on Tuesdays & Thursdays!!!