“She was supposed to protect you,” I say quietly. Not to him, exactly. Just—out loud. Just because it needs to be said by someone.
“Yeah, well. Now she’s the ringmaster with a leash around my neck.” He says it plainly. Without drama. The way he says facts he's stopped fighting.
“Then why go back to her? I understand you were a boy then, but now? You no longer have to do what she says.”
“I do what she says because the alternative costs more than I'm willing to pay.”
“What does the alternative cost?”
His eyes find mine, hold them. “Everything I love.”
I sit with that. Turn it over. And then something shifts in my thinking—the professional brain engaging sideways the way it always does, finding the thread that doesn't quite fit, pulling on it.
Everything I love.
Not everything I have. Not everything I've built. Everything I love.
I'm recent. Whatever this is between us, it’s only been months—for me, anyway—and he's been going back to her for years. Which means it’s not only me he’s protecting.
“Who is she using against you?”
He holds my gaze for a long moment. The fire pops. Outside, a car passes on the street below, headlights sweeping briefly across the ceiling.
“My little sister.”
And there it is. The other piece. The one that makes the whole picture cohere.
A boy whose name means guardian…to protect. His little sister. And then a woman who understood exactly what that charge was worth and spent years collecting on it.
“Mary Elizabeth,” he continues, sweat starting to bead on his chest, and I'm not sure if it's the fire or the weight of saying it all out loud for the first time. I watch a bead of sweat track slowly down the center of his sternum, over the cracked ironwork of the tattoo, and I think about what it means to finally put something down that you've been carrying so long you forgot it had weight. How the body responds to that kind of release the same way it responds to everything else that matters—with heat, with trembling, with the physical evidence of something enormous moving through it.
“She has Mary,” I say.
He nods.
“And as long as you comply?—”
“Mary is safe.” His jaw tightens, then he looks at me. I'm so sure he's about to say something else—but then his hand cups my cheek instead, like he decided against it.
“Nazareth,” I say, biting back tears.
“I know, baby.”
“She can't have you forever,” I say. “She just can’t.”
“And she won’t.” He sits up, the determination in his eyes burning brighter than the fireplace. “I’ll get Mary out. I’ll get all of us out of this. I fucking swear it to you.”
He kisses me. And the moment his mouth crashes into mine, it’s desperate—not rough, butstarving. Like he’s trying to pour every unsaid word, every promise, every broken piece of himself into me before the world rips us apart again. His hands cradle my face like I’m made of glass and gunpowder at the same time, thumbs brushing away the tears.
I taste salt and fear and love so fierce it hurts.
I kiss him back just as desperately, fingers threading into his hair, a place that’s no longer part of a barrier, pulling him closer, closer, like if I can just get him deep enough inside my soul, he won’t be able to leave.
A broken sound escapes my throat—half sob, half moan—and he drinks it down like it’s air and he’s drowning.
When he pulls back just enough to rest his forehead against mine, our breaths mingle, ragged and hot. “It’s only ever been you.”
The words break me open like they always do. A man who thinks he’s not capable of love, but who loves with this kind of hunger that could raze and remake the world.
