“Good.”
The word surprises me.
Her eyes harden. “I asked you not to kill him. I did not ask you to make him feel better about himself.”
Despite everything, something shifts in my chest, warm and painful. “You are angry.”
“I’m furious.”
“At me?”
“Yes. Also at him. Also at the police. Also at the entire concept of men with too much pride and not enough therapy.”
“I do not know that word.”
“Of course you don’t.”
She presses the paperwork against her chest. “I’m glad you’re alive.”
I stop breathing for a moment.
She looks down, then back up. “And I’m glad they’re alive because I don’t want death following you back to my door. But I’m also glad you scared them. There. I said it. I’m not holy. I’m not some perfect little sunshine idiot. I wanted them scared. I just didn’t want you gone.”
The force barrier hums between us.
I want to touch her. That realization comes with such force that my hands tighten again before I remember the cuffs. I want to touch her wrist, her cheek, the damp hair at her temple. Not to claim. Not to shield. Only to confirm she is here, alive, angry, worried, and impossibly mine in no way I have any right to name.
“You should not want me near you,” I say.
Her face changes. “Too bad.”
“Evie.”
“No. You don’t get to decide what I should want while you’re sitting in jail because you went to war over my broken display case.”
“It was more than the case.”
“I know.” Her voice gentles again. “That’s why I came.”
The officer calls her name from the reception area.
She backs away slowly. “I’m getting you out.”
“You should not spend the money.”
“Tell it to someone who listens.”
“I will repay you.”
“I know you’ll try.”
“I will.”
Her mouth curves faintly, tired and worried and beautiful. “Yeah. That’s what scares me.”
Then she turns and walks back toward the desk, leaving me in the white buzz of the holding cell with rainwater drying on my coat, blood drying on my hands, and the unbearable knowledge that she came for me.
I am a soldier. I understand weapons, wounds, retreat, and sacrifice.
