When she was limp and panting, I captured her mouth in a kiss that felt more like a brand.
Mine.
I wanted her to know it. Wanted the world to know it.
I never wanted to move, wanted to stay like that forever, Cassie’s body joined to mine.
But that was impossible.
The world wouldn’t wait forever. And we still had work to do.
22
HAWK
I rolled off her carefully,trying to avoid doing more damage to my healing burn than I’d already done, and pulled her into my arms on the other side of my body.
She let out a contented sigh, and I looked up at the sky, a perfect shade of blue that only ever seemed to appear in October. I wished we could stay there forever, nothing but us and the open field, and somewhere out there, Freya wheeling through the air.
We didn’t speak right away. We didn’t have to. Everything that needed to be spoken had been said, not just with words but with our bodies.
“It’s Edmund,” I finally said.
She craned her neck to look up at me. “What’s Edmund?”
“My name. Edmund Cruz. It’s the name on my birth certificate.”
“Edmund.” It felt like she was trying out the name, seeing how it felt in her mouth. “It’s not right for you.”
“I know.”
“Hawk is who you were meant to be.”
I kissed the top of her head and she burrowed closer to my body.
After a while she spoke again. “Vigo said you wouldn’t want me to call your family.”
“It was the right call.”
“Why?” she asked. “What if…”
“What if I’d died?”
“I don’t want to think about it,” she said. “But… yeah. Wouldn’t you have wanted them in the hospital with you before…?”
I understood why she didn’t say it out loud. We both had something to lose now.
“It wouldn’t have changed anything,” I said.
“You’re not on good terms?”
“We’re not on bad terms.”
“Then… what?” she asked.
I’d never spoken about my family to anyone but Jagger and Vigo, and then only when we’d first started doing jobs together, just so they’d know what they were getting into.
But I realized suddenly that I wanted Cassie to really know me. And that meant knowing all of me, even the messy complicated parts.
