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I can’t do this.
One time, I grabbed a guard by the neck when he came up behind me and threw him halfway across the room before I realized what I was doing. I tackled her in my own house. I knew she was there, and I tackled her anyway. She has bruised ribs from it, and I'm the one standing here at three in the morning trying to work out why I keep damaging the things I'm meant to protect.
She has her arms wrapped around herself. She looks vulnerable and cold, and against all reason, I want to wrap her up and warm her.
“What happened tonight?” she asks. The question is quiet. She asks it like someone who already suspects the answer.
“Didn't sleep well.”
She looks at me for a long moment. That stillness she gets when she's filing something away, cataloging.
“You were fine in Boston,” she says.
“I know.”
“You weren't alone in Boston.”
Something in the room goes very still.
“Is that so?” I say. It is, and we both know it. I don't have anything else.
“Sleep with me,” she says, not soft about it—just the fact of it, set down between us like she's done the calculation and this is the result. “You don't have to explain it to anyone. It doesn’t have to be any more than this.”
I open my mouth.
“Torin.”
I close it.
Her ribs are bruised, and it's my fault. The list of names is still running through the back of my head. I don't know what to do with my hands when I'm not doing something with them. She is going to leave when this is over, and I can't ask her not to.
“I could hurt you.”
She holds my gaze. “You won’t.”
We go upstairs.
My phone vibrates in my pocket.
Declan. When I glance at the screen, there’s no text, just a photo. I look at it for three seconds before I shove it back in my pocket.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She watches my face and frowns. “If it has anything to do with me, I want to know.”
She’s right. I hand her the phone and start getting ready for bed. She stifles a gasp.
“Where was this taken?”
“Outside the gate.”
“When?”
“An hour ago.”
She hands the phone back without a word. “He was here. He is here. They followed the bait.”
