“Give you whatever the fuck I want, if it’s all the same to you.”
“It’s not.Move.”
“No.”
I stepped closer, reeling from the mix of his scent and Jake’s now that he wore my brother’s clothes. “If we do not go out together, I will go alone.”
“Good luck with that.”
“I do not need luck. Do you think Jake could stop me when he was here? Do you think you are stronger than him? That you know me better?”
Ranger’s flinch was subtle. A flicker of his dark eyes before he dug his heels in, setting his jaw. “Me or Jake, it doesn’t matter. You want out, go through me.”
“I want you to comewithme.”
“Liar.”
“No.” We were as close now as we had been on the patio. “I will evade you when you force my hand, but I will not lie to your face.”
“Nice of you.”
Frustration caught up with me. The irritability that had made itself at home in my personality. “You cannot stop me. From that, from this. All these things, Ranger. They are inevitable.”
“All these things...” Ranger licked his lips again, like he had outside. A slow swipe of his tongue that I now realised bought him time to think when I said things he did not immediately understand. “You’re talking like I know more than you’re telling me, when all you’ve done is pass me a gun and tell me to saddle up. Talk to me, Vik. Then maybe I’ll hear what you’re saying.”
With him so close, I’d almost forgotten what I was saying. What I wasthinking. But Jake’s earthy scent kept my feet on the ground and my heart in my mouth. “I need to check if they are still out there.”
“Who?”
“The men who come for me when I leave this place. Who shoot at me in the street and jab poison in the crowds.”
Ranger searched my gaze, his stare skipping over my features until it bored into me with enough force to sway me on my feet. “What does it mean if they’re still out there?”
“That Jake is fighting. That he is not dead.”
“You wouldn’t know if he was dead?”
“Before, maybe.” I tightened my grip on the gun Ranger clearly didn’t want. “But something inside me doesn’t work theway it used to, and now I think I would not know he was gone until his body washed up on the beach.”
Empathy flared in Ranger’s dark eyes. Then suspicion. “You better not be fucking playing me.”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll be annoyed.”
“You are always annoyed.”
Ranger leered, but he relaxed enough that I could’ve passed him if I’d wanted.
I didn’t. I had meant it when I’d told him I wanted him with me, not chasing me. And preferably able to defend himself if he did what I suspected he might and put himself between me and any fool who wished me harm. “Take the weapon. Please?”
“Only if you tell me where we’re going.”
“To the capital. To walk on the beach in the open. To roam the streets after dark, and the clubs. If I make it home by the skin of my teeth, I will know, that for now, nothing has changed.”
Ranger’s eyes grew impossibly darker. For a long moment, I thought he might refuse. That I would have to fight him to find out if Jake lived.
Then he shrugged. “All right.”
