What if I can’t save Kat?
Will I lose Shai?
If Shai saw what I wanted to do with Jagger, will that finally be what makes him walk away? Because I wouldn’t blame him if he did. He would be better off, but I could never let him go. I’m not that good of a man.
“I don’t know how many people he has with him,” Shai says as I try to fight my fingers from drumming against the steering wheel, try to stop the twitch in my leg and my rapidlyspinning thoughts to focus on him.
“I’ll take care of it.”
“How can you take care of it if you don’t know what you’re walking into?”
“Because losing your mom isn’t an option for you, and you being hurt isn’t an option for me, so I’ll fucking fix it. I don’t care what I have to do.”
Now his leg’s bouncing up and down like mine. “What if you get hurt?”
“I won’t.”
“You can’t promise that,” Shai argues.
“Then I get hurt. I promise I’ll make sure you and Kat are okay.” It’s strange when I get like this. It’s like I can’t really feel anything but my love for him. I’ve always been like this with the crew—even when everything else shuts off inside me, that love is always there—but now it’s there for Shai too…and it’s more, bigger, that thing Tiernan feels for Dean and Cillian for Ollie.
His silence tells me I said something wrong, though I can’t figure out what. I love him. I’ll protect him. That’s what you do when someone is yours.
“You’re not sacrificing yourself for us.”
“I don’t plan to die. I don’t want to die. Then I would have to haunt you.”
“This isn’t funny, baby.” His voice is so soft…scared. Why is he afraid of me?
“What did I do?” I ask. “I’m going to fix this.”
“It’s not your job, and you didn’t do anything.”
“You’re scared of me.” I feel it. I sense it.
The long pause tells me I’m right, that somehow I’ve gotten it all wrong again and that shit in my head is too fucked up for anyone to understand.
“I’m not afraid of you. I could never be afraid of you. I’mafraidforyou. Can’t you see that you getting hurt isn’t an option for me either? That as much as I want to save her, I can’t do that if it means losing you?”
No, I can’t see that. Not really. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’m not willing to risk you,” he says, a finality to his voice he didn’t have a moment ago. “This could be a trap. We don’t know what we’re walking into. We can’t do this alone. I would die if you got hurt, Cherry. Can’t you see that?”
I don’t answer, just shake my head. He doesn’t understand. Ihaveto do this for him, have to take care of Shai the way no one else has, have to put him first because he’s spent his whole life being last.
“You’re mine to take care of,” I say.
“You’re mine to take care of too,” he answers. “You come first, and this…we can’t do this alone,” he says again, but I’m stuck in the first part of what he said.
You come first.Just like he comes first for me.
“Go home, baby. We need to go home.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I do,” he says softly. “I know they might not be willing to help. I know I’m not family to them the same way I am to you.”
“You’remyfucking family, which makes you theirs,” I argue. And he’s Ollie’s friend—the others’ as well, but the two of them have a special bond—and he’s Cil’s friend too, even if my best friend hasn’t let himself see it yet.
