Page 120 of The Bronze Garza

“Yes.”

“Do I want to know?”

He looks down at me, features highlighted under the glow of the moonlight. “Do you?”

Trusting him to guide me, I close my eyes and keep putting one foot in front of the other. Inhale deeply, then roll a weighty sigh off my chest. “I don’t think I do—at least, not yet.” I stop moving and look up at him. “Will you take care of it?”

Even in the dark, his eyes flash with a fierce promise. “All of it.”

“Thank you,” I whisper, then lean into him and resume walking.

As the house comes into view, I ask, “Any updates on the girl?”

“Her name is Jody,” he tells me. “She’s conscious. No injuries. Turns out she’s the daughter of a fed.”

“Jody,” I repeat absently. “How did you even know that’s what was happening?”

“Experience, I guess. Ever since I served…I’m nevernotaware. Assessing. Seeing what others don’t,” he says. “Wish I could turn it off sometimes, but I don’t know how.”

“What you did today, Torin, was…right. Heroic.”

“I’m not a hero,” he bites with distaste, as if the very word offends him.

“So you keep saying. But didn’t you also fight for your country? Survived three tours?”

A long pause, then in a less acerbic tone, he repeats, “I’m not a hero, Lyra.”

Says every hero ever.“Okay,” I murmur, letting it go. “But I’m glad you stepped in and saved that girl—Jody, from suffering a fate like mine. Even though I’m still mad at you for almost getting shot.”

His arm around my shoulders tightens, and, unhurriedly, we climb the long, concrete stairway up to the house on the rock.

Outside the door, I watch unseeingly as he keys it open, a wave of inexplicable sadness wrapping around my heart like barbwire.

“Torin?”

“Hmm?”

“It’s someone I trust, isn’t it?”

He holds the door open for me. “Yes.”

I search his eyes to see if they would tell me who, but they’re impassive, giving nothing away. Maybe because he knows more than I do that I’m not ready to know.

With a resigned sigh and a nod of acceptance, I walk into the house. And mentally prepare myself for the imminent revelation of betrayal.

ChapterTwenty-Nine

“Because I care.”

Lyra

I emerge from the bathroom tothe smell of pizza sauce on the air.

Torin’s phone became a freaking hotline after we came in. Every call was apparently “important” and I couldn’t get his attention for more than two minutes before another “important” call came.

Peeved, I’d left him alone and came upstairs for a bath. Which I ended up dozing off in and almost drowned, swallowing a mouthful of my own filth. But, whatever.

Feeling marginally less nettled, I don the purple, silk short set Torin bought me. It feels seductive against my skin, and as I look at myself in the full-length mirror on the wall, at the sliver of skin between the hem of the lace-trim camisole and the waistband of the shorts, I’m thinking I’ll start wearing sleepwear like these more often. They make me feel sexy. Sexual. Confident. Like awomanwho knows who she is. Someone different. Someone better. Not the childish, floundering me that I’ve been clinging to.