All Chapters of When He Begs Me To Stay: Chapter 31 - Chapter 37

The night stretched on like a taut wire, every shadow a potential threat, and every sound amplified into a warning. My hands tightened around the burner phone on the table, though I knew checking it again would accomplish nothing but spike my anxiety. Even when silent, it felt alive, mocking my attempts to breathe steadily. I could feel the tension in my shoulders, and in the muscles as I forced myself to relax, as if any twitch might betray me to whoever was out there watching. Lucas sat across from me, the wound along his side still tender, but his posture steady, with his eyes alert in the dim light. I noticed how he favored his right side slightly, the way his grip on his coat tightened with each subtle noise outside, and it made my chest clench in a mix of concern and admiration. “We’re not going to wait for them to act,” he said with the words slicing through the quiet tension like a sharpened blade. “We take the first move, make them react.” I let his word

I didn’t realize how long I’d been waiting until the moment my fingers hovered over the keyboard, the plan solid and dangerous in front of me, every detail sharp enough to cut. For weeks, I had hidden, observed, and calculated. Shadows had been my companions,and silence my armor but now, it was time to stop waiting. Time to make my presence felt, carefully and deliberately with all the anger I had bottled up inside. Lucas leaned against the doorway, one hand pressed to the frame, with his eyes assessing every inch of me. The faint twitch of a smile crossed his lips as he noticed my tension, my barely contained energy. “Ready?” he asked. His voice was calm, but I could hear the restrained thrill beneath it, a mirrored reflection of my own anticipation. I nodded, biting back a laugh that felt like it might shatter the room if I let it. “More than ready. It’s time they start feeling us. That we’re not hiding forever. That every move they think is safe could be our a

The air outside felt charged, like the city itself knew something was coming. I hadn’t felt this exposed in months,no disguise, no shadows to crawl into, no place to hide behind someone else’s name. Just me, Ava, out in the open again. Grayson moved beside me, silent but alert, scanning every face that brushed past us like each one carried a secret. Lucas trailed a few steps behind, calm in that unnerving way he had, one hand tucked casually in his jacket, the other holding his phone, pretending not to be tense but I could feel it. We all could. We had been tracing a lead for hours—an encrypted message Grayson had cracked late last night. Coordinates. A time. A promise of the next piece of the puzzle but the closer we got, the more something in me screamed that it was too neat, too easy. “I don’t like this,” I murmured, keeping my voice low as I stepped around a cracked pavement. “It’s too quiet.” Grayson’s jaw twitched. “That’s exactly what I said ten minu