Page 73 of Meet Me In The Dark

“What we’re doing to Kara.”

Stymied, Luke gaped at him. “Wearen’t doing anythingto Kara.”

“No, I mean…what we’ve done. What we will do, if we survive this. Keeping her with us. Making her live this life in the dark with us. Keeping her from who she could be.”

Luke had had a similar thought, before the car crash. He knew Kara cared about them, knew she might even love them, but he hadn’t been sure if she understood what she was giving up. A life in the shadows seemed sexy, exciting, at least at first. And the life she’d lived in the light, as it were, hadn’t been particularly good to her. But back then, he’d wondered: would she grow to regret their life together, and then, grow to resent them for it?

Was there a day, far off in the future, that she’d leave them? Leave him?

And this time, they’d have to let her go?

But Luke didn’t feel that way anymore. Not since she’d appeared in front of him like an avenging angel, determined to save him and Conor, no matter the price. The way she’d carried herself, the fire in her eyes when she’d shot Christopher’s kneecap, the confident way she faced their current hell with both strength and vulnerability…all of that told him two essential things:

One, that Kara had grown into the person shewasmeant to be.

And two, that she truly loved them, and didn’t want to leave.

Luke didn’t know how to get that through Conor’s thick skull.

“Conor, man, listen to me. I know the guilt and shame over what we did before has caught up with you. I know you’re…” Luke searched for the right words. “…mea culpa-ing all over the place. Did you ever think it’s not only because you’re coming to terms with your own culpability in all of this, but also because you’re avoiding the real truth: you can’t control everything?”

Conor looked stricken. Over the last week and a half, color had returned to his face, and the strain in his cheeks, jaw, and neck had begun to disappear. But now, it was like all that healing had never happened. As if he’d been shot in the chest all over again.

As if Luke was the one holding the gun.

“Maybe that’s true,” Conor said, throat thick. “Maybe I’m still trying to control everything. But that doesn’t change the fact that she’s different now. She always flirted with danger, but she lived in the light. She had a whole life ahead of her. And now she thinks she wants to be a hitwoman? She wants to murder people? She’s okay living in the shadows with us? That’s light-years away from what she told you back in the cabin. You told us, remember? She was excited for the future. She wants a basset hound, for fuck’s sake.”

“We can get her a damn basset hound,” Luke said, both frustrated and desperate.

“Really? Really, Luke? And who’s going to watch the damn dog while we’re all on a hit together? What if we have to go on the run again? Did you ever think of that? She deserves alife. All we’ve given her is death.”

Fuck.Luke’s certainty popped like a pin in a balloon.

“Hmm,” Micah said.

Luke glanced at him sharply. There was somethingworking behind Micah’s blue eyes, but he wasn’t sure what, and Micah probably wasn’t willing to share. Yet.

Bullshit.They needed to be past hiding crap from each other. “What are you thinking?”

Micah blinked. “You’re asking?”

“Yes,” Luke said.

Micah sighed, stretching his neck, his shoulders—as best as he could, given the zip ties. “Conor, you said that was how she saw her life before us, right? Well, you’re not considering one simple but important fact: she’s not the same person she was before us. It doesn’t matter whoshe would’ve been because that person doesn’t exist. Why would she live someone else’s life?”

The hole in the popped balloon closed, and the balloon began to reinflate. Micah, as always, was right.

He watched Conor, who rubbed a hand through his hair. It was longer now; hitting his ears. He desperately needed a haircut, and yet Luke liked him like this. With his hair longer, Conor no longer seemed like the impassive ex-military man who had never let go of a military haircut and the closed-off heart to go with it. No, he seemed…

…vulnerable.

Too vulnerable, physically. But emotionally, it was a good change.

“Micah’s right, you know,” Luke told Conor. “I mean, that would be like me asking you whoyouwanted to be before all this shit happened, and then expecting you to be that person. Our old selves would still be in the military, thinking we were doing our part to save the world when we were really being used by greedy motherfuckers. Hiding that we weretogetherfrom a community that would pretend to accept us while being wary of us. We wouldn’t be free. Do you want that?”

Conor shook his head. “No. Absolutely not. I like our lives the way they are. I like what we do. I know it makes me bad?—”

Luke interrupted before Conor could keep spiraling. “I know you’re having an existential crisis, but it doesn’t matter if we’re good or bad men. It matters that we’re her men. It matters that we’re each other’s men.”

---