I swallow hard, heat crawling up my neck like I just stuck my hand in a fire.
“I love you,” I say.
A beat passes. Then Talon huffs a laugh—real this time, rough around the edges.
“Damn,” he says, lighter, like he’s annoyed at himself for it. “This little truth-stack bullshit actually worked.”
I lift my head, blinking at him.
He points at me with our joined hands. “Even though you broke the rules.”
“I did not—“
“You did,” he says, smirking now. “You went ‘rule one, rule two,’ and then five minutes later you hit me with ‘fuck the rules.’”
I snort. “Shut up.”
“Nah,” he says, eyes brightening a little. “You shut up, Miss Teacher.”
He leans in to kiss me.
“I guess I am a rule-breaker after all,” I murmur.
And isn’t that the truth?
I’ve been told—on very good authority—that it is.
The Lord of the Dead told me so himself.
So what else can I do but prove him right?
Regret comes two more times.
The first is when I get into Talon’s car.
It’s a beat-up, mismatched, duct-taped monstrosity. The seats are torn open, foam bulging like exposed viscera. When I sit down, something metal shifts under my shoe.
A gun.
There’s another one shoved between the passenger seat and the center console. Cassian takes the front without reacting to either. He nudges one aside with his boot and looks out the window.
Talon drops into the driver’s seat, slams the door, and twists the key.
“Sorry for the state of my ride, Doc,” he mutters. “The car was already like this when I stole it.”
Stole it.
Great.
The second regret arrives thirty-two minutes later, when I open the door to my apartment and let both of them step inside.
Talon spins slowly in place, eyebrows lifted.
“Damn, it’s clean in here. You some kind of psycho neat freak?”
“No,” I answer. “I just prefer order.”
“So you are a freak,” he concludes. “Got it. Would’ve been weird if you weren’t.”
