Page 60 of Meet Me In The Dark

“Kara,” he warned. He didn’t care how injured he was, or that there were cameras. He was going to sit up and smack her little ass until she admitted that she?—

“I love you. I never meant for it to happen—I tried so hard to fight it. But you snuck into my heart the same way you snuck into my apartment and made yourself a home there. I couldn’t kick you out if I wanted to. And Idon’twant to,” she ended, her voice as fierce as the tears in her eyes. “I love you all, so much, and I’m keeping both of you, and that means no more martyrdom or sacrifices. We’re done with that. Time to play the villains we’ve been all along.”

Conor wasn’t sure what this feeling in his chest was. He’d never felt anything like it before. Ironic that he felt this way, on their own version of death row. And still.

Still.

If he were some fool poet, he’d say it was like his slightly-damaged heart took flight. He wasn’t a fool poet, so he’d never say it out loud, but he still felt that way.

“Kara, sweetest girl,” he began.

“I love you,” she interrupted him. “But I need to hear you say it back.”

If Conor could have reared back, he would’ve. How was it remotely possible she didn’t know how he felt?

Had he never told her?

“Kara, I know I’m a complete dumbass, but how could you not know? I think I’ve loved you since those two nights we had together on Coronado Beach. Fuck, earlier. IknowI started falling for you when you commandeered the jukebox in that bar.” He smiled, remembering. “And I was a complete goner for you when we got to your hotel room and you told me, point blank, that I wasn’t pressuring you into fucking me, because ‘no one ever makes me do anything I don’t want to do.’’ He quoted, transported back to that night outside her hotel room door, when he’d tried to be a gentleman for the last time in his life. “I thought it was obsession, I thought it was just this never-ending want. You have consumed almost every waking and sleeping moment, and Icouldn’tsleep without knowing if you were safe. I stole you from your life because my heart is a greedy fucking stupid bastard who refuses to be without you. I felt that way then, and I feel it now. I love you, perfect girl, and I will love you for my entire life—no matter how long it lasts—and after, too.”

And yet it’s your fault she’s here,a small voice whispered in his mind.Are you sure that’s really love?

The voice sounded like the professor.

“Ditto,” Luke said, startling a laugh from Conor.

“Ditto?” Kara whipped her head around. “Really?”

“Romantic,” Micah observed. “For what it’s worth, also ‘ditto.’”

She laughed, more like a hiccup, and turned back to Conor. Her smile turned her wet eyes to liquid gold. Kara, it seemed, didn’t care about his similarities to Christopher Johnathan. “I knew you loved me when you threw yourself between me and that bullet,” she joked. More seriously: “I just needed to hear the words.”

“I’d do it again, a million times.” Although the idea ofher ever being shot at again made him want to murder someone. “I’d give you the words a million times, too. But you aren’t getting shot at ever again, Kara. I fucking mean it. No more heroic shit. I know you’re going to want to do something to get us out of here, but all it will do is get you killed. Please don’t do that to us.”

Sooner, his mind told him.Get her killed sooner.

He shoved that thought away.

“Okay,” she said.

“That doesn’t sound like a promise.”

“No heroic shit,” she promised that time. “Just villainess shit from now on.”

That didn’t sound good.

“Kara,” he warned.

“Nope,” Luke added. “None of that.”

Micah cleared his throat. “I think villainess shit sounds good, personally.”

Kara beamed.

“Since when do none of you listen to me?” Conor growled.

“Since you started making bad decisions,” Luke muttered.

Kara rolled her eyes, tossing her matted hair. “When have I ever listened to you?”

---