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Now we were on the verge of settling things, one way or another. Either the people involved in Connor’s death would be brought to the mother of all reckonings…

Or we would.

“Want half?”

He passed me a foil-wrapped Hershey bar. Or rather, part of one.

“Half? You ate three quarters of it.”

“Sue me.”

For some reason it made me laugh, and Austin started chuckling right along with me. It felt good, laughing into the wind, his broad back shifting up and down against mine. Hell, it was fucking cathartic.

“You think we got this one?” I asked, going suddenly serious.

Austin paused. “Maybe.”

“Gimmie the odds.”

“Sixty-forty.”

“Us or them?”

I felt him shift to glance back at me. “Do you really wanna know?”

I sighed without turning around. “No, actually.”

“There you go.”

The sky was a rich purple now, the sun almost level with the horizon. Out in the desert things got cold quickly. Warming up sometimes took a while, but the cold…

“Dallas.”

I shifted again, this time so I could see him. Austin was facing me now. Completely ignoring the half of the

neighborhood he’d been tasked to watch over.

“I love you.”

I blinked, dumbstruck. Not because of the admission, but because it came at the strangest of all possible moments.

“I love you too,” I told him.

We were almost face to face now. Cheek against cheek. The wind sent a blast of cold over me, causing me to shiver.

“When did you know?” he asked.

I thought for a few seconds. “When you told me how much you loved my brother.”

Silence reigned. A moment passed between us… of shared feelings, emotions, love.

“That time out on the balcony didn’t hurt either,” I smirked.

He kissed me, and suddenly it wasn’t so cold anymore. It was just the two of us, sitting on top of the world. Looking out over oblivion and holding each other, while the rest of the universe went to complete shit all around us.

You do love him, Dallas.

It was fantastic, even just for a minute, to forget about everything else. To press my lips against his, to feel the fire and heat of his body against mine.