“Fucking knocked myself out on the way down,” he adds. “Stupid fucking bench.”
Despite myself, I snort.
He gets to his feet first and offers me a hand. I take it, letting him haul me up, and the second I’m standing, his brown eyes are all over me—cataloging injuries, irritation tightening his jaw.
“Kenji?” he asks.
“Dead.”
“Tex?”
“Also dead,” I say. “Everyone’s dead.”
He lets out a long breath, relief pouring out of him like he’s been holding it since he ran away from that locker room. He steps in close and rests his forehead against mine, careful of the swelling, careful of me.
For the first time all night, the tension drains.
The desert waits and I can finally take a goddamn breath.
And the first thing my brain offers me in the quiet is his face.
Not Kenji’s.
Not Tex’s.
Owen Liang. The wrong guy. The wrong guy, that I killed.
The man who wasn’t supposed to die. Who found something he shouldn’t have, tried to do the right thing, and paid for it because I was marked for blackmail.
I swallow hard and shove thethought down.
There’s no absolution coming. Just direction.
“You figured it out.”
Alejandro says it quietly, his hands coming up to cradle my face with careful fingers, like I’m something that might break if he presses too hard. His eyes are full of something heavy and unguarded, and suddenly this feels less like aftermath and more like confession.
“Of course I figured it out,” I tell him.
My hands slide around his sides and up his back, feeling solid muscle under torn fabric, grounding myself in the fact that he’s real and standing here.
“You would never miss a shot.”
“That’s right, baby,” he says, voice dropping low.
He leans in and kisses me, slow and deliberate, holding it just long enough to make my knees threaten to fold. When he pulls back, he rests his forehead against mine and exhales.
“But I missed my shot with you, Saint,” he murmurs. “For two fucking years.”
The words land.
I remember everything all at once, and my hand slides down to his arm, fingers curling carefully around the gunshot wound.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me you were El Fantasma?”
He hisses, jerking slightly. “Fucking Christ, Saint.”
“I’m not squeezing that hard.”
