Page 65 of Meet Me In The Dark

Leonard Cohen.

I think that’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard.

Maybe I’ll play it for you some time.

For a moment, he got lost in the lyrics. When he looked up, all three of his lovers were watching him: Luke, bemused; Micah, pensive; Kara, tender.

“I never thought I’d get a chance to hear you sing,” she said, her voice quiet.

He paused his humming. “I never thought I’d get a chance to sing for you. Would be nice to have a guitar.”

“Right,” Luke said from across the room. “To really sell the whole emo college freshman looking to score thing.”

“Hush,” Kara said. “You all don’t have to be macho assholes all the time. Let’s have this, okay?”

Luke immediately softened, and Conor didn’t blame him. “Okay, sweetheart.” To Conor, he said, “I haven’t heard you sing since the early days we served together. You still sound good.”

Kara hummed in acknowledgment. “You don’t sound like Leonard Cohen, by the way. Or Led Zeppelin, for that matter.”

He laughed, even though part of him wanted to cry. It was an unfamiliar feeling, the way he had to clench his abs and squeeze his eyes to keep the tears away. He’d nevercried, not until Luke had been tortured by the professor’s men and Conor was forced to come to terms with his culpability in Luke’s pain, in Kara’s, even Micah’s, for that matter.

We’re the same, you and I.

He’d give anything to stop hearing the professor’s voice in his head.

He cleared his throat. “So who do I sound like?”

She wrinkled her nose, thinking. “I think Damien Rice? But that’s not right, either. You sound like you, and I love it.”

“I love you,” he told her, the words feeling suddenly, incomprehensibly urgent.

She kissed him, gently, her hand falling over his heart. Unable to help himself, Conor pulled Kara into his lap, kissing her, soft, hard, everything in between, trying to capture this moment between them because even though Conor O’Connell didn’t get scared, didn’t believe in fear, he was fucking terrified that soon the moment would be gone, and so would she.

“I love you, too. All of you,” she said. “So much.”

Conor desperately wanted their story to go differently. It had started back at that bar on Coronado Beach, with a redhead in a short black dress, a faraway look in her eyes, and sand in her shoes, who wasn’t trying to find herself, but a place she could call home. The part of him unwilling to let go of hope, that didn’t take no for an answer, insisted that it ended with them together. But even if they escaped, did he still deserve her? He could hear her in Marcus’s airplane bathroom after they’d rescued her from the black ops site, reminding him that he’d stolen her from her life.

And what kind of life could they give her, anyway? So far, all they’d given her was blood and darkness.

As if she’d heard his train of thought, she rested herhand on his cheek. “Who do you think you would be now, if you hadn’t met me?”

He considered. “Do you mean if we hadn’t met, or do you mean if the professor hadn’t found out we’d met, and decided to set me up and ruin my life?”

She winced, but put on a brave face, and he wanted to kick himself for hurting her. “Both, I guess,” she said.

Luke and Micah were quiet. Just listening.

“Sweet girl,” he said. “Let me be clear.Youdidn’t ruin my life. He did. You gave me a life, more of a purpose than I ever had in the military. I don’t know who I’d be without you, and I don’t care. I don’t want to know that man, because that man would be sad and empty and unsure why.”

Her eyes filled, and she kissed him—this woman who rarely cried, was crying for him.

He kissed her back, trying to comfort her with his lips, and then he pulled back, needing to ask, and already hating the answer.

“Who do you think you’d have been, if you had never met me? Met us?”

She was quiet for a moment, thinking.

“I like to believe I would’ve stopped feeling so lost, at some point, but I don’t really believe that. I think I would have finally gotten that dog I wanted, but I don’t think I would’ve stayed in one place at first. I think I would’ve bought a little van and tried to make it pretty and stayed on the road for as long as I could, and I guess, after a while, the pressure of society would’ve gotten to me and I would’ve settled down in a job, in a house, with a partner and some kids, just like everyone else. I think I would’ve felt safe, and I think I would’ve felt normal, for once.” She shook her head, and laughed. “I think I was on my way there, to that reality, before you and Micah abducted me. Already had that sad,empty feeling. All I was missing was the boring, stable husband, and the dog.”

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