I hum and press a kiss to the top of his head.
He turns in my arms, wrapping his hands around my neck and looking at me. His eyes are glassy, that soft green a little darker.
“I love you so much it physically hurts. I’ve been completely lost to you from the start, and I wouldn’t change a single thing about how we got here. I want to spend forever showing you what love is supposed to feel like.”
The words slam into me harder than any punch I’ve taken. First time anyone’s said that to me. My mother doesn’t count. That was different. This is something I never thought I’d hear from anyone.
I close my eyes and feel something crack open in my chest. “I love you too.”
He wraps his arms tighter around me and buries his face in my neck.
“You’re mine until I stop breathing. Maybe longer. I don’t know how death works, but I’ll figure out a way to haunt you if I have to. You’re never alone again. I won’t let you be.”
He huffs a laugh and nods into my neck.
I’m sick with how much I love him. Twisted up in ways that would send him running if he knew. I’ve been his sincethe second I met him in that clinic, those green eyes soft with kindness I didn’t deserve. Stitching me while he rambled. Every word from that night is burned into my memory.
I replay it when I can’t sleep, when I can’t think straight, when I need to remember why I’m still breathing.
He lets go of me and walks to the bathroom, returns with the first aid kit. His entire gray shirt is covered in my blood from hugging me, even some smeared across his chin. He wipes away the blood on my neck, looking at the cut. “This needs stitches.”
I’d forgotten about it. Don’t even feel the pain, so I just nod.
His hands are steady as he stitches me up. When he’s done, he puts the kit aside and lies with me. He moves his hand through my hair, slow and soothing.
“What did you and Mikhail do?”
I will not lie to him, no matter how much it might hurt him. He deserves the truth from me always.
“We killed David and Mendez.” I pause. “And David’s father. William.”
He clears his throat, looks back at me with eyes a little wider than before, processing what I just told him.
“What? Why would you kill Will? What did he do?”
“He was dirty when he was on the force. Was working with someone who wants to hurt my family now. He had to die.”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Then lets out a breath. “Will was a horrible person. He had serious temper issues. Once drove into my car when he was drunk, then blamed me for the way I parked. He helped David cover up the abuse with his connections.”
Fuck. If I had known that I would have drawn out his death. Motherfucker deserved worse than what he got.
Kelly winces. “What about Gary?”
“He did that himself. I startled the hell out of him when I clicked the safety off my gun and then I watched him choke on a cookie in front of me.”
“Oh my god, he did not.”
I raise my brow. “He did.”
“And you didn’t save him?”
“Why the fuck would I save him just to crack his neck after, and then throw him down the stairs? That would’ve been cruel.”
He opens his mouth like he wants to argue, then closes it, then opens it again while scrunching his nose in that way that means he’s working through something. “Wow. That’s some next-level compassion right there. Death by Oreo … Cracking his neck would have been faster.”
I tilt my head. “It was homemade. Not an Oreo.”
“Jesus, not the point.”
