Page 53 of Cage of Thorns and Blood

I need to call it off, but how without talking to her? Without admitting what I’ve done. I know she read those papers, photographed them too because I have a camera in the corner of the study.

“What?” she asks again as I continue to stare, like a fawn blinded by the headlights.

“Your freckles are still there,” I say gruffly. I run the pad of my finger over them, across her cheek.

She wipes at her nose self-consciously as if brushing them off.

“Don’t,” I say. “I like them.”

“They make me feel like a gawky teenager again.”

“I loved you as a gawky teenager,” I say, half jokingly.

Then it hits me. A bullet to the head of realization.

I did love her.

I fucking loved her.

For all my teenage hard man act, the reason I was so cut up for so long about what she did was because I loved her.

She was my first, and now here she is again, in my arms and reigniting old feelings.

I can’t do this.

Shit.

“Renata, there’s something I need to talk to you about?—”

The jarring trill of my phone makes me jump. I pull it out of my pocket and frown when I see Clifford’s number.

“I need to take this.” I walk away from her and answer. “Yes.”

“You need to come meet me now. We have an issue.”

“What issue?”

“Two dead men. That kind of issue.”

“Ours?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck.”

“Meet me at the docks.”

The docks ceased being used for moving goods a long while ago and became gentrified. But areas of them are still run down and almost empty. That’s where we have our office, and if one needs to, can bring shipments up the old canals at night.

“I have to head out. Work.” I pull Renata to me and kiss her forehead. “Let me walk you back to the house, and you can chill until I get back.”

She nods, and we take a brisk path through the woods to the house. I change quickly and kiss Renata as I leave.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go home?” she asks.

“No.” I shake my head. “Make yourself comfortable. Enjoy yourself. I want you here when I get back.”

“Okay. See you later.”

---