She turns my hand in hers so she can press a kiss to my knuckles. “Are you okay?”
“Are you?”
Her grin lifts up the corners of her mouth, and I can’t help myself—I press my thumb to that curve and then run it over her cheekbone. “I’m good,” Ella says. “I just had a little moment.” With a small shake of her head, a laugh gets away from her. “I’d rather stay out here and kiss you. But my friends will wonder where we went.”
“Mmm,” is all I can say, and my hum of approval is low and deep. As would I.
Ella rises on tiptoe and kisses my cheek, a brief heat against my skin, and then she’s gone, moving back through the alley.
I’m about to turn around and let the railing keep me from collapsing when I see him.
Damon.
At the corner of the building, his eyes on Ella as she enters the small restroom beside the alley. My heart pounds. Damon comes to a stop a foot in front of me, and when he looks into my eyes, I know.
He saw.
He saw everything.
Damon slips his hands in his pockets, his jaw working. There are probably a hundred things he’d like to say to me right now, and I tense, waiting for the worst of them. How I’ve put Ella at risk. How I’ve been dishonest. How I could truly fuck things up for The Firm, and, by extension, for him. The silence gets painful.
The worst of it is that admitting any of it threatens to take her away from me.
There’s no judgment in his words, only disapproval in his expression when he states, “You have to tell your brother.”