He runs his fingers roughly through his hair, making his normally tousled look even messier. For once, I don’t want to bring order to the chaos. Luca is perfect exactly as he is.
“No, I mean, I am territorial. There’s no point lying about that, but watching you claim him while you hide me...” Luca won’t meet my eyes, and I feel sick.
“I’m hurting you,” I say, and the truth of that statement hits me square in the chest.
He sighs. “I know it’s not intentional.”
I swallow hard. Does intention matter when the end result is the same? Luca does everything he can to make sure no one gets the chance to hurt me, yet I’m hurting him constantly with this decision. Well-meaning or not, that’s on me.
“What if we tell Ciprian so we don’t have to hide while we’re in my apartment?” I suggest. “He can have the spare room, and you can stay with me and Alistair.”
“Yes,” Luca says without a second of hesitation. He lifts me up on my tiptoes to kiss me, his tongue stroking mine before I push him back.
“You didn’t let me finish.” I gesture to the curtain, where the stage lights are currently shining through the dark fabric. “I still want to keep it quiet out there. I won’t put you more at risk than I already have, Luca. Please try to see it my way. If someone from your past was trying to kill you, would you drag me directly into the line of fire?”
He groans. “When you put it like that?—”
“I sound smart and impossible to argue with.”
Luca smiles, rolling the hoop between his lips. “I wouldn’t go quite that far.”
I shove at his chest, but he catches my hands, pulling me into his body and trailing kisses along my neck. His touch makes mehot and needy, and I can’t believe I managed to keep my hands off him for as long as I did.
“You’re important to me,” I tell him emphatically, admitting the only version of the truth I’m brave enough to share right now.
Luca’s eyes flicker yellow, and he kisses my forehead. “You’re important to me too.”Does he mean what I mean when he says that?I refuse to ask, bending over instead to grab the discarded water bottle so he won’t be able to read the question written all over my face.
“We can handle this, right?” I ask, feeling more myself than I did fifteen minutes ago, despite the butterflies knocking around in my stomach.
Luca nods, bringing my knuckles up to his lips. “No one will take what we’ve built, Celine. Not without a hell of a fight.” He’s not talking about material things but about everything else. The things in a person’s life that can’t be measured; things that make life worth living.
I nod, determination replacing my fears. I traded everything familiar to me in order to gain autonomy here on Earth. I chose this life. I’m exactly who I want to be. And Luca is right: no one will take that from me. If they try, I’ll kill them. It’s the most unvarnished truth I’ve confronted all day.
THIRTY
Unspoken rule of the Fringes #62:
Mystery buys time. Make them wonder what you’re holding back.
LUCA
My phone rings at six in the morning.
With bleary, bloodshot eyes, I squint at the screen and answer as soon as I recognize the number. “Harry? Are you okay?” The twist in my belly tightens as I hear crying in the background.
“We’re safe, but someone broke in.”
“Did they take anything?”
I keep my voice low, hoping not to wake anyone else. I want to be sure before I rip them out of bed, since it’s only been two hours since we got home from the club. Two hours since I collapsed on the air mattress and discovered it had more in common with a rock than a bed. Two hours since I realized my feet hung off the end and decided to suck it up. It’s only one night. We’ll tell Ciprian tomorrow—today, now, I guess—and I’ll curl up with Celinetonight.
“It’s not about what they took, it’s about what they left behind,” Harry says. There’s a strain of unease in her voice; one I’ve never heard from her before. “Three more angels, dropped directly into my house. I didn’t even hear them come in, Luca. Anika is translating. But I don’t have enough room to keep them long-term. I don’t want to turn them away...”
“We’ll find another option,” I assure her, my head spinning as I push to my feet and grope around for the pants I kicked off before I crawled into bed. “Celine and I will be over soon to help.” And to figure out if whoever broke into her house is connected to the piece of shit trying to kill her.
I hang up the phone, padding down the hall to Celine’s room and easing the door open. Alistair is lying on his back, sound asleep. Celine is draped over his chest with her wings covering them both. My heart swells.Fuck, they’re cute.Since they’re likely to gut me for that thought, I’ll have to keep it to myself.
Bending over the edge of the bed, I run my fingers up the center of Celine’s back. “Baby,” I whisper. “Baby, wake up.” I’m about to shake her shoulder, when I find myself flying backward and slamming into the wall.
