Page 40 of Meet Me In The Dark

“So did you. All I want, boss, is for us to be together again. Can you give me that? Let go of that crushing guilt for a second? You once told me we were Kara’s villains. So be her villain with me. Burn the world down to get back to her. Starting with this goddamned place.”

God.

Fuck.

“I love you,” Conor said.

“Fuck, I love you so much,” Luke swore. “When we get out of here, things will be different between us. I promise I’ll never teabag you again.”

Conor laughed, feeling less weighed down. “What happened to never lying? Yes, you will.”

Luke smiled, his lip splitting and fresh blood welling. “Yeah, I will. But you like it.”

“I do.”

The other man reached out his manacled arm to brush Conor’s face, only to come up short. Conor tried to pull toward him, but his manacles also held him back. Only afoot between them, but it felt like a mile. The air that should’ve been skin to skin hurt.

So he raised an arm again, holding up his hand as if to press it against Luke’s. Luke moved his, so their hands mirrored each other. It had to be enough, for now.

Friend.

Adversary.

Brother.

Partner.

Lover.

“I promise I won’t abandon you in this, Luke,” Conor swore, meaning it. “I’ll fight with you. I’ll help you get us out of here. You just tell me what you need me to do.”

“Good, because I have a plan.”

As Luke quietly began to outline it, in case there were mics in the room, Conor listened. He’d follow it, to a point. When it came time, he’d give himself up to make sure Luke got out alive. Because he’d do anything, anything, to keep this man safe.

“Agreed?” Luke asked.

“Agreed,” Conor said, lying to the man who hated lies.

And then the door opened and the professor entered the room.

“Turns out I don’t need either of you,” he said. “I found her.”

11

Once upon a time, in a far, far away land called Denver, Colorado, Kara had decided to try something new. Kara, whose recklessness knew very few bounds, constantly dared herself to try new things back then.

As she’d once explained to Luke, Micah, and Conor, the recklessness had started as a way to get attention from her parents, and evolved into something she did, just to prove she could. Looking back, she realized that she hadn’t made stupid choices because she was enjoying herself; she made them because she desperately wanted someone to grab her firmly by the shoulders and say, “stop.” She had that, now, but back then, she’d been completely on her own, and starving for connection—even as she chased after physical risks to avoid emotional ones.

So, she made questionable choices: take a cross-country road trip with no destination. Pick up gorgeous strangers in bars and restaurants. And, on that fateful day in Denver, attempt to climb a wall, even though, as a born-and-bred big city girl, she’d never done such a thing before in her life.

And yet there she went, dressed in what seemed appropriate wall-climbing gear, and attempted to make her way up a wall. The problem, of course, was that like most daring perfectionists, Kara expected to get wall climbing right on the first go. The bigger problem was that, of course, she didn’t.

Having to face failure, even a small one, had triggered a panic attack, the worst one thus far in her life. (Past Kara was, after all, a sweet summer child who had no idea what it was like to be kidnapped,twice, not to mention wake up in a car bobbing in the ocean. Past Kara didn’t even know the meaning of panic attacks.)

And then, to her utter surprise, a meddling, unsolicited hero appeared, talked her down from her panic, and up the rest of the wall. And when he’d asked her if she had a fear of heights, she’d told him no, and opened up to him about her perfectionism-triggered panic attack. How frustration with her own inabilities and what that might say about her, especially after she’d fucked up so badly in her real life, made it hard to breathe sometimes. And then she’d gotten to know the man, and they’d fucked a lot, and she’d let him into her heart, and well…here she was, in an airplane, on her way to rescue him and their lover.

There was one tiny problem, though. Because if climbing a wall had triggered her fear of failure and set off a panic attack, then what she was about to do right now was like the five-alarm fire version. After all, she was now suited up and being given high stakes instructions on how tojump out of an airplane. Failure didn’t mean not being able to climb a silly wall. Failure meant death: Hers, for sure, and possibly Micah’s, Luke’s, and Conor’s, too. Especially if she took Micah down with her and there was no one to save Luke and Conor. Thinking about it was goddamn terrifying.But it didn’t matter, because Luke and Conor had saved her, more than once, and it was her turn to save them.

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