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When we’re done, I just roll her on top and hold her, and sleep.
* * *
I don’t know what time it is that I wake, but Sidney’s dressed and pacing. I slowly get up and pull on my jeans, half buttoning them.
“Princess?”
Her eyes blaze. “I’m still mad. You could have died, Mack. Died. And if that . . . that was the last thing we ever said, I . . .”
“I said some dumb fuckin’ things. And I’m sorry. I just . . . I don’t know how I’m meant to feel, Sidney. You are everywhere in me. And you’re leaving and you kept things from me and—” I stop. “I’m making a mess of things. Sometimes I’m a fuckin’ ass, okay? And I didn’t die. And no matter how mad I might get, I care. Bottom line. Maybe too much. I care.”
“How do you make that sound like an insult?”
I laugh. “It isn’t. Unless you find it fuckin’ insulting, I care.”
She has her phone and keeps looking at it, and I go to her and grab it.
“Why is your gran saying they found her? Who?”
“I don’t know. Mafia?
I frown. “The mafia want an old lady?”
“Do I look like mafia?” She sucks in a breath. “If they have, I need to go. Now. I need to keep her safe, everyone safe.”
I stare at her, frowning. “I . . .” Then I get it. This time I run my hands along her arms, drawing her in. “Princess, you can’t keep the world safe.”
“No, but if I go, and . . .”
“Hand yourself over? Turn in evidence you don’t have?”
“Yes.”
I chuckle and kiss her. “Sidney, that’s my line. Keeping everyone safe.”
She pulls free. “No, I can do this.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t but running off isn’t helping.”
“It is if it keeps you safe.”
“I don’t need that.”
Her eyes harden and I get too late just how scared she is, how out of her depths, the struggle she’s in with herself.
“Sid—”
“We’re too different,” she whispers, stepping back. “And you just think I’m helpless. Like my mother does. You’re a cage too.”
Am I? I rub a hand over my face. I don’t feel like that at all. But I want to protect her, solve her problems, and keep her safe. Isn’t that how things work? It isn’t. I don’t think she can, but she shouldn’t have to.
If I say that, I back her into some corner of her own making. I don’t know what to do. For a rare moment in my fucking life, I’m lost.
“We don’t know what’s going on. But if we face it together?” She doesn’t answer. “That, just there, in that bed was . . .” I try and find the right words.
“Hot sex. Nothing more.”
There’s a loud banging on the door, and I think of ignoring it, but I can’t. Instead, I head off to answer, trailed by Sidney.
