Like how I regret shifting into Christian Adler that night.
We both ended up taking the most painful routes towards our goals… I’m sure if I hadn’t overreached, I’d still have found myself at the Taiga estate, driven by curiosity of what could have been… instead of trying to take it from someone else.
“Thanks.” The words leave my lips first.
A truce.
Because he ran for me when I faced down the barrel of the shotgun.
He covered my back while we ran into enemy territory.
Xavier’s expression is complex as he walks towards me—as he stops beside me to put his fist on my chest.
And whatever it is between us, mends at least two stitches deeper.
“Thanks.” He repeats the words back to me, hiding behind his hair.
But the words are heavy and warm.
“Never expected you to be afraid of shotguns, cookie man.” He raises a brow.
“Have to keep you on your toes somehow,” I reply nonchalantly but I know there’s a warmth in my eyes. “It’d be boring otherwise.”
Gabriel swings his arm around my neck and everything inside me squirms immediately, pulling me out of the moment.
Too much, too soon.
“So is this your face?” He asks with an obnoxious grin.
“Still working on it,” I mumble. I’d tried for a shorter hairstyle, wild white curls that fall short above my neck and across my face. I… like how it frames my blue eyes… and I like blue eyes because of Christian.
Anyhow, I made myself shorter, just a bit smaller, so even Gabriel has an inch on me now but I kept the muscle and the lean body so I can move around better; I deduced my strengths are more geared toward agility and not power from the fight with Olsen.
Brute strength may not be my style.
“You have a thing for pretty faces, then?”
I give Gabriel a deadpan stare, “No one wants an ugly face. I know you’d change yours if you could.”
The comment earns me a smack on the head, until Reuben’s voice is slicing through us.
“Xavier!”
Our heads whip towards him and his team, who’ve now reached the second floor, but there are still enemies trickling in from deep inside the building.
How much money does August have exactly?
“We’re going on ahead!” Reuben shouts over the sound of new gunfire. He’s separated six men from the team to take with him to the upper levels, along with Ms. Taiga and I dislike that it might not be enough.
“We’ve got it covered!” Xavier yells.
Reuben’s eyes are on me, and even from this distance, I know there are things he wants to say.
We’re the only people to exist in a world where time is the one thing we don’t have… yet I can read his lips from here.
‘Don’t go anywhere, baby.’
When he turns away I’m convinced I’m not breathing at all—it feels like my heart will burst out of my chest completely if it beats any harder or faster in my ears.
