Page 99 of Dirty Game

She studies me, head propped on her fist. Her eyes don’t roam the way most do.

They fix on the places that should scare her—the scar on my ribs, the ragged tear near my hip, the old break in my arm that never healed quite straight.

She’s cataloguing, not admiring.

Her fingers start at my chest.

Slow and cautious, like she’s counting the notches on a gun.

Over the bullet groove just under my collarbone, where the bone bulges a little from the fracture, then lower, to the mess of skin just above my heart.

That one gets her. She circles it twice with her fingertip, then pulls back as if she’s touched something obscene.

I crack my right eye, just enough to see her reaction.

It’s not disgust. It’s the opposite. She looks like a kid at a funeral—too young to understand, too smart to ignore.

Her hand hovers there a long time. Then she lays her palm flat over the scar, as if she could smother what made it.

Her breath hitches.

I open both eyes.

Her face is six inches from mine, eyes wet but fierce.

“Do you ever sleep?” she jokes.

“Sometimes.” My voice sounds wrong in the hush. “Not when I’m being watched.”

She blushes, which is ridiculous, considering what I did to her against the glass last night. She doesn’t pull away, though. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

We lay like that for a minute. The heat of her palm seeps into the scar, waking up the nerves.

I feel her heartbeat as clearly as my own.

She says, “I need to know more about the dynamic with Sienna.”

I don’t pretend not to know who she means.

I don’t answer right away either. The ceiling gives me nothing but my own shadow, the city glare splitting my face in two.

“I killed for her,” I say, finally. “She tried to kill me.”

Rosalynn’s hand tenses, but she doesn’t let go.

“She was a job at first. We both lied. Both knew it. She was always her father’s daughter.” I stare at the ceiling as I talk, because if I look at Rosalynn, I might soften the story, and I don’t want to. “She was good. I fell for her.”

Rosalynn’s head tilts. “How?”

“She loved me too, once upon a time. But you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and the tabs I’ve kept on her show she hasn’t put her new life to good use.”

She breathes, the sound half relief, half horror. “So why didn’t you kill her?”

“I should have. I wanted to.” My jaw aches as I say it. “But she was already pregnant.”

“Dante,” she says, small.