Page 113 of Kill for a Kiss

He lets out a dry sound. It’s almost a laugh. “Tell that to the part of me that still wants you to lie. To look at me like you used to. Like I’m the one you chose.”

The silence around us holds still. I don’t know what to say. So I reach for him in the dark. I want to show him that I’m listening. I always will when it comes to him.

“Let me be that idiot,” he whispers, “even if it’s only for one more moment.”

I don’t know what comes over me. Maybe it’s the stars. Or the way his voice breaks. Or the tattoo still healing beneath his shirt, over his heart. But I turn my body toward his, and when his wide, wounded eyes meet mine, I lean in.

It’s meant to be a tender kiss. But it hurts anyway.

He freezes for half a second as if he doesn’t believe it’s real. But then he kisses me back. His hand finds my face, shaking slightly as his thumb presses into my damp cheek.

The kiss deepens, becoming more aching and longing. It feels like he’s trying to brand me into his mouth before the moment’s gone.

Maybe that’s why it tastes so much like heartbreak over what’s ending. Grief of what could’ve been between us. Hope of what the future could possibly hold.

When I pull back, I don’t open my eyes. I merely breathe him in—his smoke and sweetness—with our mouths still close enough to feel the ghost of what just passed between us.

“God, Elle,” he whispers. “I’d kill for a kiss like that.”

I blink slowly, the ache catching in my throat. “You didn’t have to.”

He leans back, looking at me, his expression half-lit by moonlight, bruised and smiling like he’s been through hell to have this simple moment in time. To be merely here with me under the unforgiving night sky.

We’re in a world that won’t turn back time. A world that treatsheartbreak as a trivial thing, despite it clearly wrecking us.

“Yeah, I didn’t have to kill for it,” he says, grinning ruefully. “But it sure as hell feels like I did.”

And then his arms brace behind him, his head tipped toward the stars.

“Thanks for letting me dream, Elle,” he says. “I haven’t in so long that I almost forgot how it felt. But since I met you, I feel like I can dream up a better life now, even if I have to watch you be with someone else. It’s strange. It’s fucked up. But honestly, I’m seriously happy for you and Sterling. I know he’ll always watch over you.”

I look up too, staring at the same sky. Neither of us says anything else. And beneath a blanket of blinking stars, with a stolen kiss still burning on our lips and goodbyes woven into silence, we let the moment linger one more breath, one more heartbeat, one more ache we’ll carry quietly. At least, there’s hope threaded into the future that awaits us.

Then there’s a sudden sound somewhere far from us, but it’s completely out of place. My heart thunders at its startling familiarity.

In the distance, an engine roars, drawing closer.

Stan’s already up and alert. “Oh, for fuck’s sake…” He groans, helping me up with an outstretched hand. “Can’t a guy have some heartbreak in peace?”

26

Elle

A roar of an engine tears through the quiet night, splitting the air like a scream. My breath catches, heart stalling mid-beat. It feels like a ghost is dragging chains across the floor of my memory.

I smell exhaust, taste adrenaline on my tongue, and suddenly I’m back in that panic room with gunfire echoing against steel walls. My knees weaken. My body remembers what my mind and my memory refuse to fully reveal.

Gunfire. A tracker buried in one of my skin grafts. Sterling’s hands, steady despite the blood. Clo’s lies unraveling with every pulse of pain, until the truth cut through the haze. Sterling was never the villain who took me from Clo. He was the one pulling me out.

And now that same engine roar is heading toward him again. I’m terrified and frozen—blood pounding, limbs rooted—but Stan moves as if it’s his instinct to cover me, to not cower in the face of certain danger.

One second he’s saying something under his breath, the next he’s a wall in front of me. That protective force in him switches on like a flipped fuse.

“Get behind me,” he orders, already stepping forward.

“Stan—”

“Now, Elle.” His voice is steel laced into the syllables. “Don’t argue. Stay behind me at all costs.”