Better When He's Bold

I smiled at her and saw her eyes brighten when my dimple appeared in my cheek. “Bry, this is the Point, it thrives on things like major crises and lunatics hell-bent on vengeance. I get what you’re telling me. The little things matter just as much as the major things. I will always choose to be with you, Brysen, but I can’t just walk away from what I’m doing here, even if it means you can’t stay.” She gaped at me and I brushed her bangs off of her forehead. “I do love you and I need you to keep me from turning into something I hate, but I can’t ask you to give yourself to the streets, to this life, if it’s not what you want.”

She narrowed her eyes at me and rubbed her lips against my palm. “Then don’t ask.”

I felt my insides seize up and something in the center of my chest twist so hard, my heart couldn’t find a way to beat around it.

“All right, I won’t.” Even if it felt like it would kill me.

“Good, and then when I’m there—on the streets in the city, when I’m there every time you come home, you’ll know that’s the only place I want to be. It’s where you are, Race, so it’s where I have to be.”

I wanted to collapse in relief, but all I could do was lean over and kiss her in a way that probably wasn’t appropriate, considering her banged-up condition.

I would hold on to her with everything I had and I would make sure she stayed just the way she was. I would never take the little things for granted, and just as tightly as I planned on holding on to her, I was going to hold on to this dark and dangerous place that was my home. They were both mine, and I would give up anything and everything to keep them.

“It’s not a place anyone really wants to call home, but if you give me some time, let me figure some things out, I can make you the queen of my broken kingdom. I can make this a place that isn’t so terrible to be.” It was a bold claim, one I would battle through hell and move the very earth the Point sat on to live up to. Bax was willing to watch the city burn and eat itself alive for Dovie. I wanted the opposite. I wanted to build it up, give it legs, make it a place that could stand tall and proud.

“There is good on those streets. I know that’s what you’re fighting for, even if you have to do it in a nontraditional way.”

“How can you see that through all the messed-up stuff that has happened to you since getting involved with me? Why aren’t you running the other way?” It would have been the smart thing for her to do the second after I kissed her. Her fate was sealed from that very instant.

“That bad stuff didn’t come from you. Like Karsen said—bad things happen and we just have to deal with them, and I can see it because I’ve been looking at you for a long time, Race—all of you. I know exactly who you have to be and who you want to be.”

If I could rip my heart out of my chest and physically hand it to her for safekeeping, I would. For a long time I had avoided collecting things, avoided feeling attached to much of anything because of the fear that it would get taken away from me. I could tell by the look in Brysen’s eyes and the slant of her mouth that nothing was going to take this girl away from me, and that made risking everything I had for her a no-brainer.

“I’m not going to tell you that I’ll take care of you anymore. But I am going to make it my mission from here on out to see to it that you can take care of yourself. You already have the fight in you; we just need to give you a little oomph and some street smarts to go with it.”

She lifted a blond eyebrow at me and the conversation was cut short as the doctor finally made an appearance. He poked and probed at her until she growled at him, and he told her he did indeed want another CT scan of her head. That knot on her temple seemed to be a concern, but as long as she was awake and looking at me, I wasn’t going to freak out.

Before a couple nurses showed up to wheel her off to radiology, she flashed me a grin that looked an awful lot like the one Dovie had given to Bax and asked me, “Do I get a crown if I get to be your queen?”

That made me burst out laughing, which had the nurses giving me a scolding look.

“I’ll give you whatever you want.” And I would until both the parts of the man I was ran out of things to give.

We weren’t really a good bet on making this work, but I was a guy who liked the long shot, and I always put my money on the long shot. I was hoping the fact that we were undeniably in love with one another put the odds on our side.

THEY WANTED TO KEEP Brysen in the hospital overnight. Her CT scan came back all clear, but that knot on the side of her head was some cause for concern, so they just wanted to keep her under observation. Since there was only room for one of us to stay with her in the room they moved her to, I let Karsen curl up in the chair for the night and wandered off to find out what happened to Booker.