“You know it wasn’t your fault, right?”
He sighed, meeting my gaze with a wounded look. With more raw, unflinching honesty—unclouded by rage—than I’d seen from him since the moment we met. “I know it wasn’t my fault in the same way you know it wasn’t your fault. I understand that that’s technically true. I didn’t kill Yvette any more than you killed her, or any of the others. But we didn’t save her either.”
His words—his goddamn fuckingtruth—sucked all the air from the room. Right out of my lungs. I tried to breathe, but nothing happened. My airway just gulped at the painful vacuum his brutal honesty had left in its wake.
“You’re right,” I whispered when I could finally breathe again. And by then he’d downed another glass. “We failed them. We bothsuck.”
“Yeah. Well, at least you know how to find the fucker who pulled the trigger. Figuratively speaking. I’m totally useless until you give me someone to punch.”
Numb, I drained my glass.
Everyone else was more interested in comforting and reassuring me than in acknowledging the painful truth. Were they worried it would break me? Send me hurtling into an abyss of trauma?
Bishop didn’t seem concerned about that possibility. Because he thought I was stronger than that? Or because he was drunk?
“What about you?” he asked as I set my glass on a coaster. “What were you trying forget, before I got here?” His gaze settled on the six-pack carton full of empties on my kitchen counter.
“I was…um…coming to terms with some shit.”
“Something to do with Silas?” He poured me another, and I realized we’d launched into some kind of bizarre role-reversal, where he was my bartender. Asking me about my troubles.
“Yeah. Just getting ready to mine my own trauma for clues.”
“Oh yeah. Because you were, like kidnapped. Tied up, and shit.” He shook his head. “That’s fucked up.”
I picked up the glass and drained it.
“I’m sorry.” He leaned forward on the couch, his elbows resting on his knees. Holding his glass cradled in both hands. Staring down into it. “I know you probably don’t want to talk about any of that. But I…well, that’s kind of the other reason I came here. And I had to be drunk to get up the nerve to ask.”
“To ask what?” Had he already said? Had I missed a question?
I was starting to remember what it felt like to betrulydrunk. Back before I was infected.
“How did she feel? I mean, you went through that. You thought you were dying, right? Youcouldhave died. So…how scared were you? How scared—” Bishop’s voice broke, and his hands clenched around his glass, his knuckles going white. “How scared wasshe?” He looked up, and the pain in his gaze felt like a punch aimed straight at my soul. “Did she… Did she die in terror?”
The ache in my heart swelled to take up my entire chest, bruising me from the inside out. The truth was that he would know much better than I would how Yvette felt before she died. He’d been there. But the deeper truth was that information wasn’t what he really wanted from me. He wanted comfort. Reassurance.
I stood and rounded the coffee table to sit next to him on the couch. “Bishop.” I plucked the glass from his grip and set it down, then I took his hand and held it. “I don’t know what Yvette went through before she died. I have no idea what she was thinking or feeling. No more than you do, anyway. What I am absolutely certain of is that you and Austin did the best you could for her. To take care of her and make her comfortable. And I am just as certain that she knew that. I…” I cleared my throat, swallowing the lump that seemed determined to choke me. “I wish I’d had someone like you there with me, when I was sick. When I was confused, and afraid, and all alone.” When I’d thought I was dying. “And I’m beyond grateful, on Yvette’s behalf, that she had you both.”
Bishop nodded, slowly. Then he nodded again. He let go of my hand and drained his glass, and because my options at that point seemed to be drink more or cry, I threw back my own.
When I stood, the world spun around me. For one blissful second, I thought I might pass out. But then Bishop was there steadying me, one hand on my waist. “Whoa…” he said, his breath stirring my hair, above my ear. “I think you’ve overcome your tolerance to alcohol, Marshal.”
“Thank god,” I whispered, my focus snagged on his throat, just inches from my face. “I’m so fucking tired of thinking.”
“Me too.”
I dragged my gaze up and found him staring down at me. My next breath caught in my throat, and suddenly I realized how good he smelled. Like whiskey and leather. Like hunger, and rage, and power. Like all the best, of both man and beast.
Bishop blinked. Then his mouth crashed down on mine like a gust of wind blowing the front door wide open. It was startling and electrifying for one white-hot second, but then, when I didn’t pull away, that kiss…changed.
I could feel his loss. I could taste his rage. It all came spilling out of him and into me, but he must have been getting something in return, because his groan, the eager way he clutched at my hips…that was all hunger. Need.
It was a soul-deep ache for something too complex for me to process in that moment.
All I really understood, as the room blurred around me and I clutched at his shirt, as he lifted me and my legs wrapped around his waist, was that whatever this need was…I had it too.
The stubble on his chin scratched as he kissed his way down my neck, and I clutched at him when he eased the burn with his tongue. The first time his teeth grazed my throat, my legs clenched around him, pinning him to me with no conscious thought.
