“Yes.” The steely defiance in his stark gray eyes tries to pull me in once more like it did before, but I fight it and I win.
“And why’s that?” I demand, making sure it sounds patronizing, because when I make a decision, no one else gets a choice.
“I could just run away.”
This time I have to snort with derision.
“You can barely stand longer than a minute. How exactly are you planning on outrunning every man and woman in this clinic?”
The weirdest thing is, I actually want to hear his answer. I’m not just asking to be an asshole—that’s just a bonus. Right along with the fear, I see that steely determination harden the corner of his eyes again, and it strikes me again how fucking strong he is. At least mentally. He was held against his will and beaten for hours, and he’s still meeting my eyes, despite the fact that I’m being deliberatelyunfriendly. It’s better if he realizes right from the start the kind of man I am, the kind of man he’s going to have to deal with for the rest of his life.
The rest of his life?
Yes, I want to have this brave man giving me attitude for the rest of his life. My life.
The memory of that last lesson Da taught me drowns Colby’s retort.
“You’ll know, lad. There’s no way to escape that feeling, those new dreams.”
The wistful tone was so unusual coming from him that I was speechless while he recalled how he knew Ma was the one.
“I was lucky that she was born into the life I’d chosen, and I was even luckier that she hated her father as much as I did, but even if that hadn’t been the case, I know I would’ve done anything to spend the rest of my life with her.”
“And she felt the same?”I’d asked, and I still don’t know why I needed to make sure. I’d been a witness to their love for fourteen years.
“I’m a lucky man, Eian,”is all Da had said on the subject. I didn’t know why he felt lucky when, at the time of that conversation, it had been eight years since she’d been murdered.
My eyes focus once more on the present, on Colby’s dark eyebrows and somehow even darker, expressive eyes.
Now I know.
That thought echoes in the sudden and almost complete emptiness of my mind.
All that’s in there is the determination in Colby’s jaw, the strength he showed when we got him out of that warehouse and he started fighting me to get to his daughter, the intelligence behind his eyes.
“Are you thinking about how you’re going to kill me?”
“What?” I stumble back. From shock? From the blow of what I just realized? “No, I’m not going to kill you,” I rush to reassure him—another anomaly. I don’treassurepeople. Hell, even Rory’s better at that than me. And I also shouldn’t be telling him he’s out of danger. “What were you saying?” Fuck, I need to get my head straight.
He looks up at me with suspicion clear as day on his face. I like that I can read him like the back of my hand, that I don’t even have to wonder what he’s thinking, feeling.
“Just that I’m sneaky.” His voice comes out in a sad little whisper, then he slumps his shoulders and looks down at his lap. “It doesn’t matter.”
It does, every thought he has matters, but I’m not gonna tell him that. He can’t know about any of... this. Whatever it is.
Okay, I know exactly what it is.
I close my eyes, suck in a deep breath, and then let it out slowly.
I can’t deal with this right now.
I’m not even close to calm when I open my eyes again. Not when I register—like I did when I came here this morning—the multi-colored bruises on his face, his still-split lip.
He got hurt because he wanted fucking answers, and when he gets back on his feet, I’m the one who’s going to have to put pressure on him to getmoreanswers.
What I want isn’t remotely important, though. I have to find evidence of what Lucian has been doing and bring it to the circle, then I can worry about the Di Leo bastard and the Venuti girl starting that war the second her father dies.
And that’s all the motivation I need to get the words out.
