Page 69 of Destroyed With You

I lean back, my brows rising.

She shrugs. “I’m a pretty confident person,” she says, and I can’t help but laugh.

“Yeah, I guess you are.”

“Honestly, if we’d had this conversation a few months ago, I might be more Team Linda than Team Winston.”

“So what changed?”

“I met a guy. We had to go undercover. Pretend like we had a relationship. Turns out he’s the love of my life.”

I realize I’m smiling. “That’s wonderful.”

“Yeah,” she says. “It really is.” She reaches across the table and brushes my hand. “Trust me,” she says. “Quit fighting it. And quit thinking about the past. Hades is over, but Winston’s still here, and I promise you he’s one of the good ones. Don’t fuck it up, okay?”

I nod, moved by her words.

But I can’t make a promise that I don’t know I can keep.

* * *

There’s a car in the driveway when we return, and I meet Emma’s eyes, both of us wondering who it could be.

“You go ahead and take those kolaches into the kitchen,” Miriam says, meeting us on the porch. “An old work friend of Winston’s dropped by. Noah, he said his name was. So we told Winston we’d get out of the way. He said if we saw you on the square, that we should tell you to come join them.” She smiles broadly. “So I guess I’m telling you now.”

I glance toward the kitchen. “Sorry to kick you out of your house. We don’t—”

Dale cuts me off with a wave of his hand. “Nonsense. It’s an excuse to go out for breakfast, and that’s always a treat. Go on, now. I’m sure they’ll enjoy the pastries.”

Minutes later, that prediction proves true, as the men pretty much attack the bag the moment we sit down.

“Do you want me to go?” Emma asks me.

I shake my head as I look at Winston. “Nope,” I say, and see the smile behind his eyes.

He turns to Noah. “How about you? You okay with Emma staying?”

“Kick out Tony’s girlfriend? He’d have my head.”

Emma’s grin lights up her face. “I recognized you right off the bat. Tony has a photo of all the Deliverance guys on his dresser,” she adds, referring to the former vigilante group that Winston told me Noah had been a part of before signing on to work with Damien Stark. “But how did you recognize me?”

“Are you kidding? He talks about you so much I asked for a picture. I’m supposed to officially meet you when I’m in LA next month. Glad we got to make it happen sooner.”

“This is all very cozy,” I tease.

Winston’s eyes meet mine. “Yeah,” he says. “It is.”

I tilt my head, knowing I should still be pissed about shutting us down in the bedroom this morning. And I’ll get back to that eventually. Right now, though, this is about our mission.

I turn to Noah. “You’re here. That means you have something?”

Noah opens his briefcase and pulls out what appears to be a latex finger. “It’s a little more sophisticated than it looks.”

“I hope so, because it looks like something you would buy in a Halloween store to put on the front porch and make people think that you’ve got dismembered fingers lying around.”

“I’ll see about setting that up as a side business,” Noah says. “It’s actually a new type of substance. And it holds a specific temperature, so we can set it at 98.6.”

“Do we think that the laptop is temperature sensitive?” Winston asks.