Page 113 of Brutal Vows

I can tell she wants to say something else, but she doesn’t. She just toys with my beard and watches me with those mermaid eyes, glittering in the dark like sea glass under shifting waters.

Feeling a thousand years old, I turn my head and stare at the ceiling. After a while, I say, “I’m thirty-eight.”

“Hmm. You don’t look a day over fifty.”

“I deserve that.”

“You do. What else? Tell me more.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know… What’s your favorite song?”

“‘God Bless America.’”

She laughs. “That’s not your favorite song.”

“It is.”

“Really?” She digests that in silence for a moment. “How strange.”

I shrug. “I like you, too. You can’t account for taste.”

She laughs again, softly, tugging at my beard. “Good one.”

Then, a moment later and sweetly hesitant: “You like me?”

And she callsmean idiot.

My sigh is a huge gust of air. “Aye. I like you. But then again, I’m a glutton for punishment, so there’s that.”

“That’s such a weird phrase. ‘Glutton for punishment.’ What does that even mean?”

“It means you love what hurts you.”

A delicate shiver runs through her body. Burrowing closer to me, she whispers, “Don’t love what hurts you, Quinn. Whatever hurts you doesn’t deserve you. You’re made for so much better than that.”

A thousand knives carve her name into my heart. Bleeding, barely able to breathe, I say gruffly, “Goddammit. Stop being sweet. I can’t handle it when you’re sweet.”

“Yes, you can, you wuss. C’mon, we’ll practice.” She lifts up onto an elbow and smiles down at me. “Hi, Homer. I’m Reyna. It’s nice to meet you. You look like an orphan’s idea of Christmas morning.”

Closing my eyes, I take a breath and pray for the Lord to help me.

Not that he’s listening. He was done listening to me a long time ago.

She whispers, “I love it that you’re this big tough guy who runs around shooting people like it’s just another day at the office, but inside, you’re all gooey. One little compliment and you melt.”

“That wasn’t one little compliment. It was a smile that could end wars and the only time you’ve ever said my first name and a metaphor about how you think of me that felt like a goddamn standing ovation.”

“It was pretty good, wasn’t it?”

When I turn my head and look at her, she’s grinning at me.

She pokes me in the ribs. “Now you do one.”

I cup her jaw in my hand and stroke my thumb over the lovely curve of her cheek. Gazing into her eyes, I murmur, “You’re a privilege I don’t deserve, but I’m going to spend the rest of both our lives trying to be worthy of you.”

She’s stunned for a moment, swallowing and blinking. Thenshe turns her face to my neck, closes her eyes, and says faintly, “If you make me cry again, the rest of your life will be very short.”