“You said not just tonight.”
“I meant it. What are you thinking being here? Why would you risk yourself for this?”
She scoffs and pulls back enough to stare up at me with glassy eyes. “I’m here because you’remyseven seconds. And you don’t get to sacrifice yourself for me. If we go down, then we go down together.”
Her words rip through my chest and burrow in my heart.
I press my mouth to her hair. She smells like the road and coffee and fear andhome.
“I love you,” I say.
“I love you, too.” She pulls back again just enough to look at my face. Her green eyes scan the damage, the blood, the bruising, and her jaw tightens.
“You look terrible.”
“You look perfect.”
She smiles and then she kisses me. Right there, in front of the FBI and the paramedics and the flashing lights and her father and whoever else is watching. She kisses me like she’s trying to pull me back into the world of the living, and I let her, because she’s the only person who ever made that world worth being in.
When we break apart, Leo is standing a few feet away, hishands in his pockets, watching us with an expression that’s somewhere between relief and the long-suffering resignation of a father watching his daughter love another man.
“Mr. Calloway,” he says.
“Mr. DeGrance.”
“You’re bleeding on my daughter.”
“Yes, sir.”
He sighs. Then he extends his hand, and when I take it, he pulls me into a hug.
When he steps back, his eyes are wet, but his voice is steady. “You’ll need representation. I’ll be that for you.”
“Am I…am I being arrested?”
“No, son. Let’s get you home.”
I look back at the warehouse. Through the open doors, I can see the cage, still standing, lit up by the FBI’s portable floods. Agents are photographing everything.
Art is being led to a separate vehicle. His hands are behind his back now, cuffed. He’s talking to an agent, his voice low and measured, and even from here, there’s calm on his face. Not defeated.
Decided.
As if he feels me watching, he turns. Our eyes meet across the chaos.
I think about eight-year-old boys cutting their palms with a pocketknife. About birthday cake at midnight and drunken nights at the falls. And I know with a certainty that he had a hand in this. Maybe it was him who called this in. Who’s giving himself up to end it.
My best friend. My blood brother. The people’s prince. And I’m the knight he just burned down his new kingdom for. Itcame way too late, and it doesn’t fix the past. But it gives me a chance for a future.
I press my fist to my chest. Once. Over my heart.
And then they put him in the car, and the door closes, and I don’t know what will happen next, but I have this heavy feeling that this is the last time I’ll see Arthur Penngrove as a free man.
The scar on my palm throbs.
Genevieve pulls me toward Leo’s car. The paramedics are rushing next to us, protesting and insisting I need to be checked out at a hospital. Leo takes them away and tells them he’ll drive me there.
Compromise.
