Page 155

Okay, fair point.

“You can’t just go around… playing god. Or getting your scary friends to, on your—my—behalf.” If Riley counted Ryan, Saint had a lot of scary friends.

Saint’s face went blank. Riley bit her tongue but held his gaze.

“I’m not playing god. It was an impossible situation.”

She stayed quiet as tension strummed in her chest. She was fine. Adults can get upset. Even Saint. And that’s okay.

He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “I’d do it again. I meant what I said.” His voice was low.

“Wheeler told me about what happened. Why you left the forces.” Riley matched his low volume. “When Cooper was… doing what he did.”

“I doubt he told you all of it.”

Riley shrugged.

“The last time I was in an impossible situation and had to choose between people, I made my best friend shoot my other best friend.” The low rasp raised goosebumps on Riley’s arms.

“There had to be more to it—”

Saint leaned forward, elbows on the table, and held her gaze with unwavering intensity. “There wasn’t. And I’d do that again too. I’d rather have Dante alive and injured—and risk his death—than leave him behind. That was what I could live with. And what keeps me up at night is that I’d do it again. In a second. You can call that whatever you want, but I wasn’t ‘playing’ anything.”

She stared at him, at the open wound he’d excavated to show her who he was. Cold whooshed down her back.

She’d asked for this. She could handle it.

“I don’t want you to make decisions for me, and I bet Dante didn’t either.”

His teeth flashed as he rasped, “I will do whatever I need to do to keep the people I love safe, and I won’t apologize for it.”

The leaves paused their movement for a second.

Riley’s mouth fell open. “Love?”

Saint straightened, expression flattening like a puzzle folding in on itself. “Yeah.”

“Oh.” She looked down at the table as a small explosion went off in her chest. “Are you sure?”

He huffed a small laugh and covered her hand with his. “Yeah. I’m sure.”

The explosion turned warm and spread throughout her body into her fingers and toes. She smiled. “That’s good.”

He squeezed her fingers and she squeezed back.

“I think I fell in love with you the night you cooked and did the dishes,” she told the pockets of light on the table.

His laugh pulled her gaze up. Joy crinkled his eyes, the colour lightening to a rich caramel. She flushed as he continued to gaze at her, thumb rubbing over her knuckles.

“You’re not off the hook yet,” she said, but even she could hear a smile in her voice. “You can’t ‘solve’ my problems—or get your friends to—without talking to me. It’s dysfunctional.”

Saint laughed under his breath. “Fine. I’ll talk to you about it sooner, after, if there is a next time.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“We can work on it.”

“Saint.”