“I bet you fifty bucks you’re gripping the steering wheel so tight your knuckles are white.”
I glanced down.
“…Fuck.”
Henry chuckled, his tone triumphant.
“Ben, she’s going home. You’re behind her, watching her back.”
“Because she won’t watch for herself.”
“Then teach her how, after she says yes to the Game. The only thing that’s going to happen to her now that you’re out of time is you’re going to drag her into your sphere, one way or another. No one else is going to be able to get to her once she’s in your orbit. It’s fine.”
I let out a sharp breath.
“She hasn’t opened the invitation. Fuck, she hasn’t even looked at it. She opened literally every other piece of mail in the car, but not the invitation.”
“And that scares you,” Henry drawled.
“No,” I said, even though my pulse was thundering in my ears.
“Yes, it does.”
“Henry—”
“Don’t bother trying to lie to me, Benjamin. I’ve known you since the day you were born.”
“She always opens her mail,” I groused.
“She opened everything except yours.”
“That’s the problem!” I slammed my hand against the dash. “She opened her bills, notices, even the damn dental postcard, but not her invitation to the Game.”
“She was upset,” Henry reminded me. “Exhausted. She didn’t have the bandwidth for anything personal.”
“She had bandwidth to get into an unlocked vehicle without checking for threats?—”
“Ben.”
“—and bandwidth to look through overdue invoices?—”
“Benjamin.”
“—but not enough to give sixty seconds to an envelope with her name hand written on it?”
“You sound like my old drill instructor when he used to chew out the new recruits for making stupid mistakes.”
“Good,” I snapped. “Maybe she needs to be chewed out. Maybe she needs someone to point out just how dangerous that shit is. She walks around like nothing bad can get to her, but the world doesn’t work like that. Not for women like her. Not for women who?—”
“Who what?” Henry pressed.
I swallowed hard.
“…who I can’t afford to lose.”
Silence hummed between us, but it was warm this time… heavy and knowing. Henry broke it first.
“You won’t lose her, Benjamin.”
