“The hell was that for?”
“What in the world were you thinking?” Fletcher retorted. “How much more complicated are you intending to make this?”
“It’s not that complicated.”
“You’re going tobetrayher, Kane.”
“And now she’ll see it coming even less.”
Fletcher shook his head in disbelief. “What about you?”
“Whataboutme?”
“You wouldn’t kiss someone you didn’t care about.”
“Sure I would. Have you met me?” The lie bittered Kane’s tongue. Maybe he did care about Zaria just a little. Maybe he’d allowed himself to enjoy that kiss before she pulled away and fled into the dark like something uncanny nipped at her heels. But what did it matter? The important thing was that it didn’t make a fucking difference. He was going to betray her just like Fletcher said. Hell, he had nearly gotten her killed.
“We have to tell them.”
Kane started at the change in subject. “What?”
“Zaria and Jules.” Fletcher’s brow flicked up. “We have to warn them about Ward. I realize it’s a risk, but they deserve to know.”
Kane leapt to his feet. He couldn’t have this conversation again.“I need to get some sleep.” He threw down the towel, now spotted darkly crimson with blood from his split brow.
Fletcher stared at it a moment, his mouth tight. “All right.”
They deserve to know.Fletcher’s voice chided Kane all the way to his room.They deserve to know.
It was a relief when pain and intoxication gathered him into blissful unconsciousness.
ZARIA
ZARIA DIDN’T SEEJULES UNTIL THE NEXT MORNING.
She hadn’t gone looking for him upon arriving home, instead collapsing into an exhausted heap on her bed and trying very hard not to think. And yet she’d found all she coulddowas think, until eventually she must have passed out with a pillow over her head and Kane’s face behind her eyelids.
Now she stood outside Jules’s bedroom door, fist poised to knock. It was still early, and the exhaustion from all she’d done yesterday made her feel vaguely hungover.
Or perhaps it was the sheer amount of self-disgust Zaria felt whenever she remembered Kane’s lips on hers. Nothing good could come from what they’d done. Her body, though, hadn’t wanted to listen to logic. Despite knowing with every facet of her being that she shouldn’t be attracted to Kane Durante, she hadn’t been able to resist goading him. She could lie to herself no longer. It wasn’t his easy charm orhis con man’s grin but the tortured flash in his eyes whenever he said Fletcher’s name. It was the way he’d shown her he washuman.
Kane would give everything to protect his friend. And for a brief, foolish moment, Zaria had wondered if he’d been trying to protect her, too. If he’d wanted to keep her alive because he cared about her. Not her work—her. Some small, ridiculous part of her wanted to be important to someone like that. Someone who fought so hard to care for nothing and nobody but made an exception every so often.
It wasn’t sensible. It wasn’t healthy. Kane couldn’t fix her desperate need to feel like she mattered. In the same vein, she couldn’t mend whatever his veritable slew of issues were. They were both carrying too much.
What she needed to focus on right now was the one person to whom shedidmatter. The person who was forever trying to help her shoulder the weight of everything the world had thrust upon her and asked for nothing in return.
When she finally summoned the courage to knock, it took Jules a moment to respond. Zaria waited, oddly nervous, until she heard him say, “Yeah?”
It was close enough to an invitation. She opened the door, bracing herself for the anger she was sure to see written on Jules’s face.
He didn’t look angry, though. He only looked tired, his back curved against the wall where he sat on his bed with a book in hand.Nicholas Nickleby, Zaria read. It was nothing she was familiar with. That said, she didn’t read much. She always found herself skimming the same passages again and again, her toes twitching incessantly, her mind led astray by a thousand other things.
“Can I come in?”
“Looks as though you already have.”
Said by anyone else, it might have sounded rude, but Zaria knewJules well enough to hear the lightness in the words. She stepped farther into the small square room, taking in the familiar surroundings. Peeling walls and dusty floors. A bed much too narrow for two people but that they’d slept on in the past, shoulder to shoulder, more than once. A poorly built side table on which sat a stack of worn books and the last nub of a candle. It was all both comforting and miserable in its familiarity.
