Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 60921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
For once, she’s not cracking jokes.
I sit beside her, close enough that our knees touch. My brain runs laps.
Stay.
Run.
Stay and maybe get pinned.
Run and maybe walk into something worse.
Neither option feels good.
Both feel better than being apart.
“What are you thinking?” she asks quietly.
“Honestly?” I blow out a breath. “I’m thinking about the difference between being hunted and being on a hunt.”
She tilts her head.
“I don’t like feeling like prey,” I say. “That’s not how we built this thing. We go after people. We set traps. We bait. We don’t wait around hoping not to get shot.”
“We don’t usually have our faces on a hit list while we do it, either,” she points out.
“Minor detail.”
She bumps her shoulder against mine. “You want to run,” she guesses. “Change locations. Make them work for it.”
“I want options,” I say. “Right now we have exactly two and both suck.”
She studies me for a long moment. “I’ll go where you go,” she says simply. “If you think staying is best, we stay. If you think running gives us a better chance, we run. I’ll bitch about the lack of showers either way, but I’m in.”
It hits me harder than any vow she could’ve made.
“I don’t want you to just follow my lead because you love me,” I say. The word still feels new in my mouth—awkward and precious. “I want you to push back if you think I’m wrong.”
“Oh, trust me,” she says dryly. “I will. But right now? I don’t know enough about the world these people operate in to make a better call than Dean and Arrow. If they say stay, I say stay. And if it starts feeling too much like ‘bait’ instead of ‘position,’ we re-evaluate. Together.”
Together.
The word settles something in me.
I wrap an arm around her shoulders and pull her in. She comes willingly, tucking herself against my side, head resting on my shoulder. Her hair brushes my jaw; she smells like coffee and sleep and the faint floral of whatever soap the cabin came stocked with.
“I hate this,” she says into my shirt. “I hate that someone is out there raising my price like I’m some limited-edition Funko Pop.”
“They picked the wrong girl to commodify,” I say.
“Damn right.” Her hand finds mine, fingers weaving. “Hey, Knight?” she murmurs after a beat.
“Yeah?”
“Promise me something.”
“Careful,” I say. “You’re going to end up with a contract.”
She elbows me lightly. “Promise me that if this gets worse—like, really worse—you won’t try to shove me out of the way and go lone wolf,” she says. “I know your type. You’ll decide the noble thing is to sacrifice yourself and ‘take them down from the inside’ or some bullshit. And I’ll be here, furious and useless and planning suboptimal revenge.”
Part of me wants to give her a clean promise.
The other part knows what I’m capable of when people I love are in danger.
“I’ll promise you this,” I say instead. “I will not make any big, stupid, martyrdom-level decisions without talking to you first. No disappearing, no ‘for your own good’ vanish, no solo ops. If I do something idiotic, you’ll be cc’d.”
She considers that. “Not perfect,” she says. “But better than what I expected. I’ll take it.” She squeezes my hand.
“And you promise me something,” I add.
“What?”
“If it comes to a moment where it’s you or me,” I say quietly, “you pick you. Every time. No arguments. No cinematic ‘we go together’ bullshit. You run. You live. You build something new. You piss on Luka’s grave when they finally put him in one.”
Her head snaps up. “Wow,” she says. “Hate that. Absolutely do not accept. Try again.”
“Lark—”
“Nope.” She twists, sliding one leg across my lap so she’s straddling me, hands braced on my shoulders. Her eyes are fierce now. “We’re not doing the ‘if I die, live a beautiful life without me’ script. I want the ‘we both live, make them regret ever breathing our names, and get a dog’ script.”
Despite the pounding in my chest, I feel my mouth twitch.
“A dog, huh?” I ask.
“Don’t dodge,” she warns. “Promise me you won’t throw yourself on any metaphoric grenades without at least letting me help redirect the shrapnel.”
“You have a very specific fantasy life,” I say.
“Knight.”
She’s not letting this go.
I’m not sure I want her to.
“Fine,” I say. “I promise… to try very hard not to go full sacrificial idiot. I promise to remember that my life is not some disposable asset. And I promise to factor in the part where you will absolutely haunt me if I screw this up.”
Her expression softens. “That’s all I ask,” she says. She leans in and kisses me, slow and sure.
For a moment, the bounty, the mob boss, the hitmen— all of it recedes.
It’s just her.
It’s always just her.
When she pulls back, she rests her forehead against mine. “We stay,” she says softly. “We work. We wait. We trust the people who’ve never let us down yet. And when this is over, we make Luka regret ever typing your alias into his little murder board.”