Page 162 of Fixation

“What if I can’t handle it?” she asks.

Can’t handle itisn’tI don’t want you.

Holding my relief in is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

She hasn’t chosen me. She has her doubts.

And yet.

This isn’t a flat-out refusal.

“I’ll make sure you can.” My chest is hot and tight. My temples pound. I have a new sense of mission. “I’ll make sure you don’t have totakeanything other than me.”

Her lips purse. “What if I don’t want to?”

Now she’s just teasing me.

I shrug. Push her off me before helping her lie on the couch.

“You do.” I put a throw blanket over her and tuck her in. “You want it. You want me. You’ll love me. I won’t have it any other way.”

“You’re really bossy, you know that?” she sasses.

“Yes. Rest your ankle for the rest of the day. Don’t move.”

She starts saying words that I’m not interested in hearing. I focus on kissing her forehead. On walking out through the back door in case I’m being watched.

I need to have a talk with someone.

Talk or kill him. Either will do.

Sergey waitsfor me at his favorite bar. The one he owns downtown.

Exactly where his text said he would be.

The place appears to be a dingy hole in the wall from the outside.

No one would guess this place fills with high rollers at night. No one notices that the back of the bar has a hidden door. Unless you’re a cop on Sergey’s payroll or me, you’d be blind to his illegal operations.

He must’ve heard my fury through the phone, because he’s finally told me where he’d be.

So here I am, hating that I had to leave Harper for this.

She’d be mad if she knew that I’m here. That I didn’t bring anything to our meeting. No gun, no knife. Nothing.

They won’t do me any good. The man who’s patting down my jeans and T-shirt would’ve stripped me of them anyway.

Not to mention that when you’re good with your hands, when you’re familiar with every weak spot of the human body, weapons are redundant.

The guard has finished his search. I move past the other two armed guards in black. Another ten feet, and I’m by the old black bar.

The man I came here for is a fucking cliché, smoking a cigar and swirling vodka in his glass.

I want to steal it from him and spill it down his black suit. Push him off his barstool and revel in the sound of his skull cracking on the floor.

Too bad he isn’t alone.

“Kid.” The derogatory name hasn’t bothered me in a while. Sergey remembers the days when I used to growl when he called me that. Prick. “You wanted to talk, right? Why do you look like you’re ready to fight me?”