In that moment, I decided I liked Kieran Vaughnn. It didn’t matter how intimidating or grumpy he was or even if he kinda scared me sometimes. I was grateful to him and wouldn’t ever complain about him again.
“I told him to leave me and handed him the last of my grenades.”
“He didn’t.”Obviously.
“He was bleeding and injured too, but he threw me over his shoulder and ran like his ass was on fire. I tried to tell him I was never gonna make it, but he told me, if I died, he wouldfollow me into hell and fight the devil to bring me back.”
“You think the devil would be scared of Kieran?” I whispered.
“My guy, he should be.”
I think the devil is scared of you too.
“We made it out of there. Some couple found us and took us in, hid us for the night. They knew enough to keep me from bleeding out and stitched me up. We hopped a train the next day and went across the border to a country I still don’t know the name of and found a doctor who opened me back up, dug out the bullet, and then pumped me full of antibiotics.”
“After that, we moved around a lot. Always looking over our shoulders. Festering with hatred and bloodlust. I might have lived that day, Pip, but after that, I was a shadow of my former self.”
“A ghost,” I reiterated.
His arms lay over mine, finally accepting the embrace.
“We got wind the government was on to us, closer than we liked, so we separated to make it harder. I spent the next few years in every hellhole I never knew existed.”
“How did you get here?” I asked.
“They eventually caught up to Kieran. I always was the best at being invisible. When I heard he was locked up, I walked right into the field office and asked to see him.”
“You gave yourself up!” I pulled back to stare incredulously.
“I remained loyal to the only man who’d ever remained loyal to me,” he deadpanned. “If he was going down, then I’d go down with him. I owed him my life, and I wouldn’t let himsacrifice his so I could keep running.”
Swallowing, I nodded. The intensity that rolled off him was silencing. The absolute resolve he felt still radiated from him to this day.
“But they didn’t kill Kieran,” I observed, too pained by even the suggestion of his death to even include Hiro.
An empty laugh vaulted from the deepest part of him, an echo of his deepest torment. “They decided we’d be more useful alive.”
By turning them into private killers. They pointed, Hiro and Kieran shot.
“How long ago was this?” I asked.
“Eight years.”
Shock knocked the breath out of my lungs.Eightyears. Even after eight years, loyalty still burned inside him.
“You stayed in a prison we both know you could disappear from just because Kieran is locked up too.” I was more than a little awed.
This was loyalty that bled into an ironclad bond, becoming its own kind of power. The dangerous kind that even the people who made them were afraid of, which was exactly why they leashed them. Leashes that Hiro and Kieran turned into jewelry.
I felt his eyes and looked up, heart stalling in my chest.
“That’s nothing compared to what I would do for you.”
Disbelief clouded my head, and I shook it. There was no way he could feel this fiercely for me. We barely knew each other. We weren’t bonded by trauma. “I didn’t do anything to deserve such loyalty.”
He rushed me, grabbing me by the waist, and plowed me into the wall. With a thud, the oxygen punched out of me, but I stood there, unbreathing, completely enamored with the way he owned me with his enigmatic stare. “Kieran might have kept me from dying. But you? You, my love,youbrought me back to life.”
Our lips fused, forming an unbreakable bond that defied everything I ever believed and rewired my brain, my heart… my DNA, until everything inside me pointed to him.
