“And there it is,” he says.
“For once, it’s useful,” I push. “She doesn’t listen to people she doesn’t trust. She barely half-listens to the ones she does. She lets me in the room when she works. She talks through her thought processes. If you replace me with someone, she’s gonnachase him, and she’ll just do it alone. Brady will try to bench her, she’ll blow past it, and we’ll be cleaning that mess off the mountain next.”
He’s quiet for a beat.
“You think you’re the only one who can keep up with her,” he says.
“I think I’m the only one who won’t shove her in a corner for her own good and then act surprised when she climbs out the window,” I say. “She doesn’t do ‘safe.’ She does continuous forward motion. You have to know that about her, Kael. Someone has to stay between that and stupid.”
That gets me a short, humorless smile.
“Fair,” he concedes. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”
“Or Tinkerbell, god forbid.”
“Tinkerbell.”
Shite.
We sit in silence long enough for the house to bleed in—pipes tick, a door closes somewhere upstairs, the faint laughter of Cotton in another wing—and me to curse my big mouth.
“How attached are you?” Kael asks quietly.
I knew it was coming.
I look at the grain of the coffee table, the worn patch where other hands have rested. “She’s not just a job,” I say.
He snorts. “That’s a yes.”
“Kael—”
“Don’t,” he cuts in. The humor drops out of his voice. “We’re not doing the part where you pretend this is neutral. Cotton’s already called me twice. Gallagher’s texting like he’s got shares in you. Shiloh Ford sent me a paragraph about how ‘Twiggy is not allowed to die’ and how glad she was that Bran Kelly was here.”
He leans closer to the camera, eyes flat.
“So listen very carefully,” he says. “You are in my cousin’s house, wrapped around my other cousin and a girl all of them consider theirs. If you so much aslooklike you’re putting your hands on her in a way I don’t like while Henry is still breathing, I will come down there myself, break all your fingers, slice off your dick, and send you back to County fucking Clare.”
The air in my lungs goes cold.
“I’m not—” I start.
“I am not joking,” he says, quiet and vicious. “You want her? Fine. Want whatever you want. I don’t care what you do with yourself when this is over. But while this is active, while she’s in your care, she isoff limitsin any way that isn’t ‘keeping heralive.’ You don’t get to bleed your damage into hers and call it protection.”
The words land like blows because they hit bone.
“I know the line,” I say, and my voice sounds rough even to me.
“Knowing it and not putting your hand on it are different things,” he replies. “You remember how this works, Kelly. The minute youtouchher like she’s yours—really touch her—you stop being the shield between her and the monster and start being another man she needs protection from. You lose focus. I will not let that happen in my orbit.”
I swallow.
“I hear you,” I say.
“Good,” he says. “Then hear this too: I sent you because you have that unfortunate weakness for small, stubborn people who poke their noses where they shouldn’t. It makes you good at this. It also makes you stupid. Stay good. Don’t get stupid.”
“Understood,” I say.
His gaze stays hard for one more beat.
