That was that. Honesty averted. Darius would let Kit get away with it yet again, because Darius was respectful. He reached out, but he didn’t push.
Kit had been taking that for granted. In the dingy safehouse kitchen, cold water clinging to his fingers, Kit knew the truth. There were only so many times he could rebuff someone before they stopped reaching out. Not out of cruelty. They might not even realize they’d stopped.
Unlocking the door was still too terrifying. But maybe he could install a peephole.
“I’m not fine,” Kit blurted out.
His heart jackknifed, like he’d jumped off a cliff. Even as he tumbled into freefall, Kit braced himself for questioning.
Instead, Darius sighed and crossed the kitchen. His shoulders blocked out the rest of the room. “There,” he said, combing through Kit’s hair. “Was that so hard?”
Kit slumped against the cold steel refrigerator. “Fucking impossible.”
Darius’s lips pressed against Kit’s forehead. Warmth spilled across Kit’s skin, tingling through his scalp. Affection and understanding loosened his clenched fists. Darius smelled good. That mattered an absurd amount.
“Are you going to ask?” Kit mumbled, in the quiet warm shadow between them.
Darius kissed Kit’s forehead again. “Not until you’re on solid ground again.”
He pulled away. Behind him, Holden leaned against a counter. He had moved without a sound, and now he watched. Like he was weighing Kit’s secrets by the ounce.
Those secrets were still heavy, but they were lighter than they used to be.
Kit took his time recovering from that first tiny confession. He spent the evening on the couch, his feet in Holden’s lap, running through daily quests on various gacha games—how many, he would never admit. Darius spent half his time with them, half his time patrolling the safehouse.
Texts from James and Bishop were infrequent and uninformative. Which meant everything on their side was going according to plan too.
Hours later, Kit sat with Darius and Holden around the dusted-off table, splitting the takeout. Darius didn’t let Holden touch any of the boxes—he dumped chow mein and stir fry on Holden’s plate himself. Like he still didn’t trust Holden not to poison them. Very cute.
“This house creeps me out,” Kit said, staring down at his chow mein so he didn’t have to look either man in the eyes. “Iamfine, but in an ‘I’m not fine but I’m dealing with it’ sort of way. Sodon’t like, worry too much. Or try to take me somewhere else. I don’t want to fuck up the plan, and I knew what I was doing.”
“Is there something we could do to help, darling?” Holden asked.
Kit stabbed his chopsticks into a piece of stir-fried broccoli. “You could both fuck my brains out?”
Darius choked.
Kit looked up to make sure he was breathing, then re-focused on his chopsticks. “Just a thought.”
“Darius will have to help you with that,” Holden said, with a regretful sigh. “The first time I fuck you, I want us to be alone.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Darius said, his voice somewhat hoarse.
“He’s chaining me up in a shitty bedroom tonight, did you know that?” Holden laughed. “Can’t have me wandering around unsupervised with all this equipment.”
“We don’t have the lasers set up in the windows here,” Darius commented, recovered from his choking fit.
Kit leaned back. The demented conversation eased his nerves. Here he was, sitting at a kitchen table with the assassin he was dating and the captive serial killer he was also dating. Kit’s hangups might not be so weird, given the context.
Darius calmly dumped more rice onto his plate. “Does it have anything to do with the last time we were here?”
Kit squirmed uncomfortably. “Yeah. I thought I’d be okay with it, but the photos freaked me out.”
The room fell quiet, the only sound the tap of wooden chopsticks against paper plates. The occasional chew and swallow.
That had been okay to admit. A normal person might be freaked out by photos of themselves as a corpse. Especially if they were modeling for photos to send to someone who had put a hit out on them.
Especially if the man holding the camera was the assassin who’d taken the job.
