Page 214 of I’m The Worst

I’m halfway out the door when Weston calls after me. “K9.”

I glance back.

“Name your price.”

“When this is over…” My voice is steady. “AJ chooses. No arranged marriages. No political alliances. No Commanders deciding what’s best for her.” I hold his stare. “She chooses who she spends the rest of her life with.”

The warehouse goes silent as he studies me. “That’s your price?”

“It’s the only one I care about.”

He nods. “Done.”

I turn and push out the door. I didn’t ask for that promise thinking she’d choose me. I asked because for the first time in her fucking life…

She deserves the chance to choose at all.

The truck is warm against my back as I lean against the passenger door, watching the sun bleed across the horizon and turn the sky orange and gold.

It’s the first time I’ve let myself breathe all day.

AJ sits cross-legged on the tailgate, knees pulled up, light brown hair blowing across her face. She dyed it back to her natural color a few weeks ago, and it makes her look more like herself. She holds a carton of fries in one hand and stares at the fading light over the field, not saying much.

We drove out to the middle of nowhere to eat shitty fast food in the back of the truck and watch the sunset.

The wind picks up, pushing her hair into her mouth, and she tucks it behind her ear without looking away from the horizon. There’s a quietness to her that wasn’t there before. Not silence like she’s afraid to talk, but something calmer. Like she finally has space inside herself to just be.

“I can feel you staring.” She smiles without looking at me.

My fingers tap against the side of the truck, restless, the way they always are when I’m close to her. It’s been a month since she got out of rehab. Five months of rehab and therapy and my ugly fucking world crashing down around us. It’s better. She’s better. But my brain never stops. One more mission I had to finish before I could ask her this. Now it’s done. The last loose end is tied off.

“You’re beautiful.”

She snorts softly. The wind catches her hair again, sending the strands across her face. She brushes them away with the back of her hand, smiling toward the horizon like she doesn’t realize she’s the only thing I’ve looked at since I picked her up.

Rehab gave her back pieces of herself. Not all of them. Maybe it never will. But she laughs again and sleeps now. She isn’t reaching for a bottle every morning just to make it through the day. It’s enough to let me breathe again.

I spent years convincing myself I didn’t need anyone. Depending on someone only gave the world another way to break you. Then she walked into my life and ruined every goddamn rule I’d ever lived by.

I need her.

I don’t know when it happened. Russia? Before that, when I was still tracking her. Maybe it was the first time she smiled at me like there was still something worth saving.

I don’t know.

I just know the thought of waking up tomorrow and not finding her somewhere in my house makes my lungs feel too fucking small.

“I want you to move in with me.”

Her hands still, a fry halfway to her mouth. “Seriously?”

“Yes.”

I need to know she’s there when I wake up. I need to hear her humming somewhere in the kitchen. I need Jackal snoring on my couch. I need the quiet to stop feeling so fucking empty.

She squints at me. “Are you asking? Or is that an order?”

“Which do you want it to be?”