Zane:He's gone. You can stop holding your breath.
Of course he's still nearby. Of course he's watching. That should terrify me more than it thrills me.
You should be halfway to safety by now
Zane :I don't do safe. Thought you'd figured that out
He appears in the back door like a fever dream with better cheekbones, slipping inside with that fluid grace of someone used to moving through shadows.
"You lied for me," he says, not touching me, just studying my face like he's trying to read my vital signs.
"I lied for us," I correct, then laugh because there shouldn't be an 'us.' There can't be an 'us.' "God, I'm an idiot."
"No," he says, stepping closer. "You're protective. There's a difference."
"I just betrayed my brother. My family. Everything I—"
He kisses me, soft this time, nothing like the desperate claiming from before. It's worse, somehow. Tender is so much more dangerous than violent.
"You didn't betray anyone," he says against my lips. "You chose happiness over history. That's not betrayal. That's evolution."
"That's a pretty way to justify destruction," I tell him, but I'm not pulling away.
"We're both pretty destructive," he agrees. "Might as well be it together."
My phone buzzes. I look at it, then at him, then make a decision that's either brilliant or suicidal. Possibly both.
"My apartment. Midnight," I tell him, my voice steady despite my internal organs staging a full revolt. "Bring condoms and that attitude."
His smile is dark and full of promise. "What attitude?"
"The one that makes me forget I'm supposed to be smart."
"Angel, you're brilliant," he says, backing toward the door. "Smart has nothing to do with what we are."
"And what are we?"
"Inevitable," he says, and disappears into the night like a promise I shouldn't want to keep.
I stand in my van, surrounded by medical supplies and the ghost of good decisions, and text him my address. Because apparently, I've decided that if I'm going to destroy my life, I might as well do it thoroughly.
My left ovary approves. My right brain has filed for conscientious objector status.
And somewhere in between, in that space where disaster meets desire, I'm already planning what underwear to wear for my own apocalypse.
Black lace, I decide. If you're going to burn, might as well look good in the ashes.
Chapter twenty-four
Her Territory
Zane
Her apartment showed me what I already knew—she didn't need saving.
Three days since the van incident. Three days of texts that ranged from medical facts about the damage sexual frustration can cause (apparently it's cardiovascular) to descriptions of what she planned to do to me that would definitely violate several health codes. Now I'm standing in her space, and everything about it screams competent disaster in the best way.
It's clean but lived-in, organized but clearly the domain of someone who operates on controlled chaos. Medical textbooks stacked like architectural features, a coffee maker that looks more loved than most relationships, and plants that aresomehow thriving despite their owner's claim that she "kills everything she touches except humans, and that's only because of medical training."
