Page 89 of The Next Lie

Ever found me before I got too far into that. I wanted you to find me.

There. I said it.

I wanted my sister. Not the cold woman in Noir. Not the girl with secrets and rosary marks.

You.

I wanted you.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EVER

I take the gloves off her hands.

Slowly, because the tape underneath is a mess and because my hands need something careful to do before I do something not-so-careful with the rest of her.

Her wrists are small and fine-boned in my grip. Too small for the violence circling her life. Too small for the anger she was trying to pour into that heavy bag a few minutes ago. Christ, it weighs more than she does.

When I came in here and saw her going at it, that animal sound caught somewhere between her throat and an actual sound… It made me ache. It made me want to hurt someone.

She watches me work the tape loose.

Her breathing has steadied, but her face is still blotched from crying. Her lashes are damp. Her mouth is swollen from the kiss she asked for, and the sight of it all does something ugly and possessive to my self-control.

I peel the last strip of tape from her knuckles and toss it aside with the gloves.

“Better?” I ask, my voice barely above a breath.

“A little,” she whispers.

A little. That’s not enough. I’ve never had a woman I wanted to fix as bad as I do Reva Leigh Hart. I just want to make everything better. Which is a joke, because how can I do that when I’m as broken as I am, myself?

I can see that everything’s not…better…in the way she looks at me. The panic has loosened its grip, but it left room for something else to move in. Heat. Need. That restless, skin-too-tight desperation that comes after a breakdown, when the body starts looking for proof it survived.

Her fingers rise to my chest, tracing the black ink along my collarbone where it disappears beneath my shirt. I go still under her touch. I don’t want to spook her. Don’t want to crowd her. Don’t want to take even one inch she hasn’t offered.

She studies my face like she hates that I’m waiting.

“Ever,” she says, voice rough. “I need you. I don’t want gentle.”

My jaw locks.

She keeps going, fingers curling into my shirt. “I don’t want to be handled like glass. I’m already broken. You can’t make it worse.”

A sound comes out of me before I can stop it. Low. Rough. Warning, maybe.

Because I can make it worse. Men like me are very good at making things worse. But I can also hold her down until the ghosts stop clawing at her throat, and right now, that is what she is asking for.

I stand, taking her with me.

She comes easily, knees unsteady, hands gripping my shoulders. I don’t carry her far. The mats are beneath us, thick and black, marked faintly where she wore herself out trying to beat answers from leather. There’s a weight bench a few feet away, but I don’t want steel under her.

I want the ground.

I lower her to the mats and follow her down, bracing myself above her. Morning light filters through the high windows, cutting across her face, catching on the tear tracks drying at her temples.

She looks wrecked and yet somehow still alive.