New York to Dallas (In Death 33)

“I wasn’t a child, not at the end. All the girls, Roarke, bruised and bloody and calling for death. But I wasn’t a child when I gave it to them. I was me.”

“You were a child when he brutalized you. And now you work yourself to breaking for those girls, and for one you saved once already.”

“I can’t be what I need to be if I kill, not that way. Not in defense, but because I want it over. I can’t be if I enjoy it. Then I’m what they are.”

“You could never be.” He swallowed back a fresh spurt of rage, fought to keep his voice, his hands gentle. “They tried to make you nothing, those obscene excuses for a mother and father. And you made yourself everything they weren’t.”

“It scared me. It . . . shamed me. What I felt.”

“You went to bed exhausted, and angry. That part’s on me.”

“I might’ve had a little to do with it.”

He managed a smile as he brushed tears from her cheeks. “Maybe a little at that. Don’t punish yourself for a dream, baby.”

When she rested her head on his shoulder, he closed his eyes. “Do you want Mira?”

“No. Yes. Maybe.” Her voice broke again as she tightened her arms around him. “I want you. I want you.”

“You have me, always. Don’t cry anymore. Don’t cry now.”

“Her face is in my head. Darlie. I knew he’d take another, but now her face is in my head. I know what she’s feeling now—the shock, the shame, the fear. She’ll have nightmares, too. It’ll happen over and over again, long after we stop him. We have to stop him.”

“We will.”

She let out a long breath. “We will. Let me fix those scratches.”

“It’s all right.”

“No, let me.” She drew back, framed his face, looked into his eyes. “Let me.”

“Well, I expect knowing us, Summerset packed a first-aid kit. It’s likely in the bathroom.”

“I’ll find it.” She got up, paused. “You stopped me. I know it was just a dream, but you stopped me. It sounds weird, but I think by stopping me, you saved me. So thanks.”

He could see her, his Eve. He could see what she’d made herself. “We’ve saved each other all along, haven’t we?”

“I guess we have.”

She brought out the first-aid kit—ever-efficient Summerset—and sat to tend the wounds. “Jesus, I really went at you. That’s bad enough, but scratching and biting like a girl. It’s mortifying.”

“You got a couple of punches in, if it makes you feel better.”

“I’m a crappy person, because it does a little.”

“Rang my bell once.”

“And still a little more.” She looked up at him. “Do you ever wonder who the hell we are, that somehow we’ll be okay that I bloodied you?”

“We’re exactly who we’re supposed to be.”

“I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t who you’re supposed to be with me. I just don’t know.”

“I wouldn’t be, without you.”

She set the kit aside, touched her lips to the wound on his shoulder. “Does it hurt?”

“Now what sort of man would admit a few girl scratches hurt?”