Ari lifts both hands.“No one said anything.”
“Your faces did.”
“I have a very expressive face.”
“You have a meddling face.”
She grins.“Also true.”
I head for the back door, and for once, no one follows.Not immediately.
The alley behind The Gin Room smells like rain-soaked brick, garbage, and city heat.It’s not pretty, but it’s real.I lean against the wall and pull air into my lungs until the tightness in my chest eases by inches.
The door opens behind me.
I know it’s Knox before he speaks.Not because of magic.Because my body has apparently decided to memorize him without permission.
“I waited two minutes,” he says.
I close my eyes.“Heroic restraint.”
“It almost killed me.”
A laugh escapes me.Small but real.
He stops a few feet away.Always those few feet.Always letting me decide whether the distance between us lives or dies.
“I’m not going to break,” I say.
“I know.”
I open my eyes and look at him.He means it, maybe not completely.There’s still a part of him that wants to wrap me in safety and snarl at the world until it behaves.But he is trying.
I lean my head back against the brick.“Do you?”
His gaze moves over my face.“I know you aren’t glass.”
My throat tightens.Damn him.
“But?”I ask.
“But glass is not the only thing that shatters.”
For a moment, the alley seems to hold its breath with us.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I admit.
“Do what?”
“Be afraid and still live.Want things without hating myself for wanting them.Let people help me without feeling like I’ve handed them whatever pieces of me I still own.”
Knox’s hands flex at his sides.“I don’t know how to help without trying to take over.”
“No shit.”
His mouth twitches.“If I tell you not to go,” he says, “you’ll go just to spite me.”
“Probably.”
