“I can’t do this,” I say.“I can’t watch you make the same bargains that turned my life upside down before I was old enough to even have a life.”
He sits back too.His chest rises and falls once.
“This is the end of it,” he says.“I’m not making more bargains.I bought time, that’s it.I’m not going off half-cocked again.I’m not disappearing, locking people in basements, pretending I know better than the law.I’m out of that spiral.I promise you.”
I stare at him.“You can’t control what a man like Reyes will do.”
“I’m not saying that I know what he’ll do.”He shakes his head.“I’m promising what I knowIwill.I’ve untangled myself from the mess I made.I’m not stepping back into it.”
A dry laugh catches in my throat.“You think a fake fire untangles anything?What if he calls your bluff tomorrow?”
“Then I take the hit,” he says.“I’d rather take it than let it ripple into you.”He watches me like he’s trying to memorize something.“The minute you appeared in my life,” he says quietly, “I was willing to throw every rule out the window if it meant keeping you safe.That’s not noble.It’s not smart.But it’s where I started.I’m trying to be the man you deserve, but first I have to clean my own messes.”
A server squeezes past with a tray of oysters.A moment of deafening silence between us.
Until—
“You keep saying end,” I say softly.“There’s never an end with men like him.There’s only a pause.”
“I know,” he says.“But there can be an end with me.That partIcontrol.”
I look at him.Really look.At the tension at his mouth, the grip on his napkin, the exhaustion in his eyes.He’s wrecked himself for days over Reyes, Eagle, the barn, my test.He’s a storm and a shelter at the same time.
“Okay,” I say.
He blinks.“Okay?”
I smile.“Let’s have dinner.A nice dinner.”
Something in him loosens.It’s visible.The line of his shoulders drops a fraction, the air between us warms a degree.He doesn’t smile, not exactly.There’s still a lot to worry about.
We don’t call the waiter back.Neither of us is hungry.We just sit.He tells me about the building, how it’s isolated, how moonflowers grow around it.
“Why moonflowers?”I ask.“Who plants something that only wakes up at night?”
“My mother, I guess,” he says.“Though why she’d be at that old barn I have no idea.Maybe someone who wants beauty when other people sleep.Or someone who wants to be unseen.”
I picture white blooms opening in the dark, leaning toward the moon.
“Do you think it’s all tied to your father?”I ask.
“Maybe.I used to think he did a bad thing because he was bad.Now I wonder if he did it because he was cornered.”
“Cornered men still choose,” I say.
“I know.”He pauses.“I’m choosing you.”He reaches for his glass of water but then sets it down untouched.“I’m not asking you to forgive me for every wrong step.I’m asking you to let me take the next step the right way.With you watching.With you telling me when I’m about to screw it up.I can take that.I need that.”
It sounds like humility, but it’s heavier.It makes something inside me both ache and want.
“Okay,” I say again, barely a breath.“Then we finish dinner.”
We do.Or we perform the ritual of finishing it—two more bites each, a slow sip of wine, the waiter’s soft inquiry about dessert turned down in unison.
Outside, the night is thick and soft, city heat rising from the sidewalk in waves.Hawk offers his arm and I take it.
“Come home with me,” he says.
I nod.Because I’m already inside the choice I made before we sat down.Because tomorrow morning I will dress in blue and go where the note tells me.Because this is my last night as a free woman, and I want it to be warm and human andmine.
