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He doesn’t interrupt me. He listens carefully, his face completely void of emotion, but I can tell he’s working through the details. Outside, the sun lifts from the horizon, spilling into the kitchen, shining on his face and giving me a good look at him.

Dark circles rest under his eyes, but they are still their pretty midnight blue. The exhaustion is so unnatural on him. To me, Rowan has always looked like he stepped out of someone’s wildest fantasies.

Specifically mine.

“There’s something else,” I say when I’m done telling him about Halle. “I met up with the girl Trist was with in Canning. Avni. I know her—from before.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“I thought she might be able to tell me more away from Trist.”

“And?”

I shake my head. “She doesn’t know who it is.” I swallow. “But I did go to Summit—the day before the raid…”

Rowan’s eyes flare. I hold up a hand. “I wasn’t behind that. I promise. I met someone, though. His name was Keller, and he offered me some Haze which he called Modafryline.”

Rowan’s nostrils flare, but it’s only for a moment. “So, it’s lab made,” he says after a second.

I nod. “And someone in The Snake knows more than they are letting on. The Scarlet Ravens couldn’t pull this off. Not right now, at least. It’s what I wanted to tell you before…”

Before you tried to kill me.

Rowan doesn’t look surprised. In fact, a tiny smile plays on his lips and my blood rushes to my head. “You already knew. Who is it? Tell me.”

He runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t know who it is either, but I did figure out that it’s someone in The Snake.”

“So that’s why you decided to help me? Haze is a threat to your family.”

His lips twitch. “You got me.”

A sudden wave of exhaustion comes over me. I’m running out of time, and I’ve barely made any progress. I should be out there, looking for answers. I was going to leave, but now, I can’t seem to move. I don’t want to leave him.

Maybe it would be easier to lie to myself about what happened last night. Maybe I should say I was drunk, that I wasn’t thinking straight, but that’s not true. I’ve never gotten over him. Last night, it all spilled out and there is no way to close that once tightly shut jar.

“We almost kissed,” I say.

“Alex—”

“No, you said you’d answer a question if I answered yours, right?”

He stares. “That wasn’t a question. It was a statement.”

“I wasn’t done,” I point out. “Did you want to do it?”

He tilts his head then. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

It’s nearly six in the morning and I’m arguing with Rowan again, but there’s something about the mornings, something that strips you raw and leaves you bare. So, I dare myself to ask a question that has plagued my mind for years.

“Then why didn’t you say it back? Back then?”

He looks at me, eyes unreadable. “You wanted me to say I love you to a cop?”

My heart hammers in my chest and then stutters to an almost stop. “What?”

Blue eyes drill into me. “You think I didn’t know who you were the moment I met you?”

I’m seizing up, my brain short-circuiting, the room around me oscillating. “You knew?”