Page 53 of Pucked Around and Found Out

The silence stretches.

Xaden's jaw is tight. His breathing is controlled again, that deliberate recalibration he does when something has gotten closer than he meant to let it.

He looks at Carnage.

Carnage looks back.

Something passes between them. I don't know what it is. I don't think I'm meant to.

“The file,” Xaden says finally. His eyes move back to mine. “An hour. The apartment.”

I hold his gaze.

“An hour,” I confirm.

He turns and walks back toward his car without another word.

I watch him go because I can't seem to stop myself.

Then I turn to Carnage, who is leaning against the passenger door with one arm pressed very subtly against his left side, his face a careful arrangement of fine.

“You're in pain,” I say.

“I'm always in pain. It's my natural state.” He pushes off the car and reaches for the door handle. “Get in, Tor.”

“Carn—”

“I need you in the car.” His voice drops, losing the lightness it was holding. “I need you in the car and moving away from him and I need to be the one driving because if you keep looking at me like that I'm going to do something we're both going to have feelings about and I don't have time for feelings tonight.”

I get in the car.

He gets in beside me.

Neither of us speaks for the first few minutes. The road unspools in front of the headlights and I watch it go without really seeing it, cataloguing instead the way he breathes, the slight catch on the left side, the way his hand on the wheel stays very still when I know it should be moving.

“How bad is it?” I ask.

A pause.

“Worse than yesterday,” he admits, and the fact that he admits it tells me more than the words. Carnage De Santis doesn't admit things like that unless the alternative is lying to someone who's already seen the truth. “Better than the week before.”

I look at his profile in the dark.

“You shouldn't have come.”

His mouth curves slightly. “I’ll always come when you call.”

Outside the window the ocean disappears behind the tree line and the cold of the night retreats. I am still wearing Xaden Devlin's hoodie in the car with the man who came anyway, bullet wound and all, because that is the world I am living in. That is the war I am fighting. And somewhere behind us on that stretch of coastal road, the Don of the Devlin Cosa Nostra is standing in the dark, denying he feels anything for me and our baby.

I know which one I'm dealing with.

I just have to figure out what to do with that knowledge before it destroys us both.

To teach is to learn. To learn is to excel. To excel is to thrive. To thrive is to live.

I close my eyes and let Carnage drive us away from the ocean.

Away from the beach.