“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Lilah.”
He repeated it slowly. “Delilah.”
Like he was testing the feel of it in his mouth.
“Like the song?”
I grinned despite myself. “You know it?”
“Unfortunately,” he scoffed. “Every idiot with an acoustic guitar butchered that thing.”
I laughed quietly. “No. It’s Lilah. You just heard me wrong.”
He blinked, and his entire posture changed.
It was subtle, but I caught it.
“Wait,” he said slowly. “Lilah Kennedy?”
My stomach dropped so hard it felt like the floor tilted beneath me. There it was. The click. The moment.
“Well,” I said weakly. “Yeah.”
“Christ.”
The word wasn’t loud, but it carried. He dragged a hand down his face, fingers pressing briefly against his eyes like he’d suddenly become exhausted in an entirely new way.
“You’re Will’s daughter?”
“I wasn’t—” I started, already knowing I’d lost whatever game I thought I was playing.
“You weren’t thinking,” he snapped, finally looking at me fully. His voice wasn’t cruel, but it was sharp and protective and alarmed in a way that sent a strange ache straight through my chest. “That much is clear. You don’t belong in this world, kid.”
“I’m not a kid,” I protested quietly.
He shook his head. “You’ve got dreams. Soft skin. No idea what blood smells like at three in the morning. No idea what it’s like to wake up wondering if everyone you love is still alive. You should be on a beach somewhere, drinking something stupid with your friends. Not sitting on my floor asking about war.”
My chest tightened then, not because he was wrong, but because he cared enough to say it like that.
“My dad was in this world,” I replied softly.
His jaw clenched. “Which is exactly why you shouldn’t be.”
Silence fell after that, thick and heavy and breathless. For a moment I looked down at my hands where they twisted together in my lap. I should have left. I should have stood up, apologized, walked out, gone back to the life everyone else wanted for me.
Instead, I looked back up at him.
“He said you’d say that,” I whispered.
He blinked. “What?”
“He said you’d act tough,” I continued. “Pretend you don’t care. That you’d try to scare me off.”
His brow furrowed. “And?”
“And that you always cared too much.”
