Viktor nudged me. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer you before.”
I lounged against the bar, craving a cigarette and a bacon-stuffed teacake. “This a blanket apology or something specific?”
“When we were talking about the orange. I feel like that conversation is not over.”
“It’s over for me.”
“Why?”
“There’s nothing else to say. You asked me a question. And unlikeyou, I answered it.”
Viktor brushed his drink aside and leaned closer. “By telling me how something made you feel, and I don’t know what to do with that.”
I knew that. I’d seen it in his face before he’d rerouted his attention. The bewilderment. Thefear. And it wasn’t cos he didn’t swing that way. It was something else, and if it was anything like the shit I suspected, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. My living-with-how-much-fuckery-Vik-had-survived box was full. Maxed out. At capacity. I couldn’t stuff another shred of heartache inside without it—withoutme—falling apart. “Can we go somewhere else yet?”
Viktor rolled his body upright. “Whatever you want.”
As if. But we left the bar anyway, and away from the fuck-awful music and sweaty air, my head cleared enough to realise that if Vik wanted to talk, I wanted to listen, no matter what he told me.
First, though, we had to survive the walk to wherever he led me next, and the main strip was a different place to what it had been at sunset.
Darker.
Headier.
Danger lacing the sweet ocean breeze.
I eyed the traffic, glad of the gun concealed at my waist. Glad that Vik stuck as close to me as I did him and that it was easy to switch our positions, blocking him from passing vehicles.
“There will come a time when I will not let you manhandle me.”
I accepted the warning with a sly smirk. “Just not tonight, eh?”
Viktor said nothing as we crossed through the spot I’d take a shot from if I was gonna gun him down.
No one did, but the air crackled with intention. Those fuckers were out there. Which meant Jake was alive and we could go home.
I opened my mouth to say so, but it was Vik’s turn to move too fast for anyone but God to stop him. He dragged me back from the roadside, flattening me against the side of a nearby kiosk, his back to my chest.
My crotch to his?—
Stop.
A car sped past us, tyres squealing, some twat shouting from the open sunroof.
False alarm.
I relaxed. Viktor didn’t, and our position spun my head. Sent my blood pooling south, and shitting hell, I could not do this danger hike with a fucking boner.
“Hey.” I gripped his hips, edging him forward. “That’s not how this works. If some cunt wants to mow you down, they have to go through me first.”
“No.”
“Yes. Or I’ll have to give the Monster Munch back.”
“If such things exist, you do not even have them yet.” Vik moved abruptly again, spinning to face me. My arms came around him without my fucking permission and I swear on my nanna’s life, I couldn’t take it back.
My breathing heavied, pulse pounding.
