I nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I am.”
He brushed my hair away from my face, fingers lingering on my cheek. “You scared the shit out of me.”
I wanted to say, “Me too,” but all I could do was grab his hand and hold on.
The contractors were already picking up the fallen pipes, muttering apologies and checking the damage. Lysander was laughing with Inez, even as she scolded him for being reckless. Finn wrapped his arms around my shoulders, holding me until I stopped shaking.
For a moment, everything else—jealousy, anger, fear—just vanished. We stood there in the middle of the chaos, the three of us tied together by the near-miss, the adrenaline, and the fact that sometimes the world keeps spinning even when you think it should stop.
I realized, as Finn kissed the side of my head and Lysander flashed me a bloody, triumphant smile, that this was my life now: complicated, messy, never exactly safe, but so much more real than anything I’d ever had before.
It was terrifying, and I loved it.
Chapter 14
Gunner
When the dust settled, I stood there like my boots were bolted to the gallery floor. Everything else was in motion—contractors moving the twisted scaffold, Lysander pressing a blood-soaked napkin to his head, Brie hugging herself and refusing to meet my eyes—but I couldn’t get my brain to fire a single coherent thought except, Don’t let her be hurt. Don’t let her be hurt. Don’t let her be…
She wasn’t. That was the insane part. She was upright, eyes wide and wild, hair full of drywall dust but her bones all in the right places. Lysander’s arm was around her shoulders, holding her steady, and the sight of it made my jaw clench so hard my teeth nearly splintered. Some chunk of me wanted to rip him off her, throw him through the gallery window, but the smarter part—the part that remembered I’d have been too slow to save her—wanted to thank him with every goddamn word I knew.
I settled for doing neither. I just watched.
Brie tried to joke about it, about her “trend of narrowly avoiding tragic, lawsuit-worthy death,” but her voice kept catching. She was trembling, the aftershocks still working through her, and the more she tried to act like it was nothing, the more obvious it became that it was everything.
Lysander didn’t look so hot himself. The blood running down the side of his face had slowed, but a goose egg was blooming above his lefteyebrow, already purple at the edges. Inez appeared from the back of the building and zeroed in on him, ignoring everyone else as she checked his pupils, asked if he could count to ten in reverse Spanish, then barked at the construction staff to bring ice. Lysander shrugged her off, eyes never leaving Brie.
“I’m fine, darling.” He had a napkin pressed to his head. “But you, Brie—you have to stop being such a disaster magnet. Some of us are not built for heroics.”
Brie tried to smile. “You did okay.”
He squeezed her shoulder, and I felt my hands curl into fists. It was worse because she let him. She didn’t lean away, didn’t make a joke, just let him hold her while she got her bearings. It made my skin itch.
I stepped forward, maybe too fast, because Lysander tensed. For a second, I thought we were gonna square up like a couple of dogs over a dropped steak, but then he caught my eye and did this little nod—like a bow, almost. A white flag. He got what I was, what she was to me. He wasn’t here to fight. He was here to keep her alive, same as me. Fuck, he wasn’t even into women, and Iknewthat.
That nod cooled something ugly in my chest. I’d torn off a corner of my shirt for the cut on his head. He took it gratefully.
I went to Brie, held her by the arms, and checked her over like I’d never seen her before. I ran my hands up her forearms, brushed drywall out of her hair, looked in her eyes for a sign of concussion or shock. She shivered, and I caught her, pulled her in close.
“You’re okay.” I buried my face in her neck. “You’re okay.”
She nodded into my chest. “You’re crushing me, Finn.”
I loosened my hold, just a fraction. “Sorry.”
“I’m fine.” I could hear the quiver of fear in her voice. “But thanks for checking.”
She didn’t let go, though. Not for a long minute. I knew she was waiting for her heart rate to slow, for the adrenaline to bleed off. It feltgood; her holding onto me. It felt necessary. I wanted to be the person she sought for safety and comfort.
Lysander dabbed at his head, then tried to laugh it off. “So much for a soft launch. The only thing soft is my skull now.” He eyed me with a strange kind of respect, like we were both members of some club neither of us had asked to join.
Inez insisted on hauling him to the Victorian Inn, muttering about ice packs and Tylenol and the inability of men to properly care for their own bodies. Lysander let her, but before he left, he turned to Brie.
“See if you can get this one to give lessons on how a man is supposed to take care of the one he loves.” Nodding at me, “becauseminesure missed the mark.”
Brie gave him a sad sort of look. “Aww, honey. I’m sorry. You’ll find a guy who’ll treat you right. You’re too precious not to.”
He gave her a small smile. “You’re probably right.”
