“She asked how long I loved him.”
“Oh, Des.”
“I told her.”
Lily’s face softened into pain.
“She knew,” I whispered. “Before I answered, she knew.”
“Women usually do.”
“That’s what everyone keeps saying.”
“Because it’s annoyingly true.”
I took a sip of coffee and burned my tongue.
Good.
Pain I could understand.
I looked through the glass wall into Dylan’s room. Georgia sat beside him now, exactly where she was supposed to be, both hands wrapped around his.
The ring shone under the ICU lights.
Mandy’s diamonds burned in my ears.
And somewhere between the two, I stood with nothing but the truth.
Dylan was alive.
Georgia loved him.
I loved him.
And the next time he opened his eyes, one of us was going to lose him all over again.
CHAPTER 10
DYLAN
The run feltwrong before the first shot.
That was the thing about trouble. It had a smell. Not always literal, though sometimes it came wrapped in dust, gasoline, hot metal, and the sour tang of men sweating through lies. Sometimes it was a silence too clean for the desert. Sometimes it was headlights where no headlights should be. Sometimes it was Nate going quiet beside me when Nate’s whole purpose on earth seemed to be filling silence until someone begged him to stop.
We were south, close enough to the border that every shadow felt like it belonged to somebody armed. The night stretched wide and black around us, cut by the weak beams of bikes and trucks, dust lifting in pale clouds behind the tires. I had done runs like this before. Too many. The kind that were supposed to be routine because calling something routine made men feel less stupid for risking their lives over it.
Nothing about that night felt routine.
Nate rolled up beside me, one hand loose on his throttle, eyes hidden behind the dark shield of his helmet. “You feeling that?”
I didn’t look over. “Yeah.”
“Good. Thought maybe I was developing anxiety.”
“You’ve had anxiety your whole life. You just call it charm.”
“Rude. Accurate, but rude.”
