Better when He's Bold

I was pretty sure it was a clear-cut case of self-defense, but I guess when there was a dead body I could see why Titus felt the need to handle the situation by the book. I had no worries that he would draw it out, not with Dovie right in the center of another shooting. There was no way Titus would risk pushing Bax back out onto a ledge by messing with my sister. Karsen nodded her agreement and took off toward the busy nurses’ station.

I went into the little area where they had stashed Brysen and pushed aside the privacy curtain just as a nurse was jabbing a needle in her arm. She winced and jerked her gaze up to mine.

“I have to get my brain looked at again.”

“That’s probably a good thing.” I walked up next to the bed and grabbed her chin in my hand. I brushed my thumb along her battered cheek. “He smack you around with the gun?”

Her blue eyes flashed and got stormy. “Yeah, and I couldn’t do anything to stop him. My little sister had to get him off of me and my best friend had to save me. How pathetic is that? I just did nothing and let everyone else ride to my rescue.”

She sounded disgusted and I let go of my hold on her face to brush the backs of my fingers across the nasty purple-and-black ring of bruises around her neck. I swore that if I looked close enough I could see the indentations of that asshole’s fingers in her delicate skin.

“You stayed alive, and when I got into that room, it was pretty clear you put yourself between him and your sister. You did what you could and you made it out in one piece. That’s all that matters.”

She caught my wrist and pulled my hand up to her mouth so she could put a little kiss on the back of it and then curled it back around her cheek.

“Then that’s all that gets to matter to you too as well. It’s not your job to save me, Race, and it’s not your job to save the Point. I know you nominated yourself for both those roles, but it isn’t required.”

I sighed. “I keep telling you that I’ll take care of you, and yet I seem to be doing the exact opposite. I’m never there when bad shit happens.”

She rolled her eyes and it made her wince. “No, but you rushed me away from gunfire and took me home and cleaned me up so I wouldn’t freak Karsen out, you bought me a new computer, you got my situation at school handled, you fixed the BMW, you got my mom the help I never would have been able to afford, you found me a place to stay, and you make me feel normal and happy, which no one else has managed to do in a very long time. I don’t need a hero, Race. I just need you to want to be with me and to love me. I need someone that will be there for me when all the little things start to add up, because that’s what real life looks like. There isn’t always going to be a stalker or a major crisis for us to navigate, but there will always be hiccups and bumps because that’s what being together looks like. We just have to want it bad enough to make it work.”

I smiled at her and saw her eyes brighten when my dimple appeared in my cheek. “Bry, this is the Point, it thrives on things like major crises and lunatics hell-bent on vengeance. I get what you’re telling me. The little things matter just as much as the major things. I will always choose to be with you, Brysen, but I can’t just walk away from what I’m doing here, even if it means you can’t stay.” She gaped at me and I brushed her bangs off of her forehead. “I do love you and I need you to keep me from turning into something I hate, but I can’t ask you to give yourself to the streets, to this life, if it’s not what you want.”

She narrowed her eyes at me and rubbed her lips against my palm. “Then don’t ask.”

I felt my insides seize up and something in the center of my chest twist so hard, my heart couldn’t find a way to beat around it.

“All right, I won’t.” Even if it felt like it would kill me.

“Good, and then when I’m there—on the streets in the city, when I’m there every time you come home, you’ll know that’s the only place I want to be. It’s where you are, Race, so it’s where I have to be.”

I wanted to collapse in relief, but all I could do was lean over and kiss her in a way that probably wasn’t appropriate, considering her banged-up condition.

I would hold on to her with everything I had and I would make sure she stayed just the way she was. I would never take the little things for granted, and just as tightly as I planned on holding on to her, I was going to hold on to this dark and dangerous place that was my home. They were both mine, and I would give up anything and everything to keep them.

“It’s not a place anyone really wants to call home, but if you give me some time, let me figure some things out, I can make you the queen of my broken kingdom. I can make this a place that isn’t so terrible to be.” It was a bold claim, one I would battle through hell and move the very earth the Point sat on to live up to. Bax was willing to watch the city burn and eat itself alive for Dovie. I wanted the opposite. I wanted to build it up, give it legs, make it a place that could stand tall and proud.

“There is good on those streets. I know that’s what you’re fighting for, even if you have to do it in a nontraditional way.”

“How can you see that through all the messed-up stuff that has happened to you since getting involved with me? Why aren’t you running the other way?” It would have been the smart thing for her to do the second after I kissed her. Her fate was sealed from that very instant.

“That bad stuff didn’t come from you. Like Karsen said—bad things happen and we just have to deal with them, and I can see it because I’ve been looking at you for a long time, Race—all of you. I know exactly who you have to be and who you want to be.”