Page 27 of Brazen Deceits

I take a breath, trying to keep myself from spiraling without knowing what is going on. “It kind of sounded like Trips expected me to be there, so I was planning on it.”

Walker glances at the door, still not meeting my gaze. “Are you sure you want to?”

Worrying this much is stupid. I scoot closer to him, my knee touching his, and snag his hand. He glances down at me, something that looks an awful lot like regret in his eyes. “I don’t understand what you’re asking, Walker,” I say.

He leans closer, cradling my cheek with his free hand, and just stares at me. It should be awkward, I should be weirded out by this prolonged gaze, but instead, it’s trance-like, his breath and mine matching, in and out, in and out, as he looks for an answer to an unasked question in my eyes.

After forever, he sighs, leaning forward to kiss my forehead before flopping back on the bed. I swallow back a strange swelling of emotion, a confusing mess of desire, tension, and soul-deep longing clothed in dread, then lie down beside him, propped up on my elbow so I can see his face. “Walker, you need to talk to me. I can’t guess what’s going on in your head.”

He tugs me down so my head is tucked under his chin, my chest pressed against his, his arm locking me against him. His silence lingers, though, despite the closeness between us, and my tears threaten. I force them back down. No tears unless I have a damn good reason for them. I’ve cried enough: over an abusive ex, over a selfish mother, over lost years and lost confidence. “Please,” I whisper.

I feel his nose tickling the curls on the top of my head before his breath whooshes out. I glance up at him, but he’s staring at the ceiling. “You know we’re not the good guys, right?” he asks.

Honestly, that was a thought I’d been avoiding. Because no matter how I look at it, it’s never quite made sense. How could these guys be anything but good? “Are there actually good guys and bad guys, Walker? Heroes and villains?”

His lips twist. “Maybe not like in the movies. But I think there is a scale of good to bad, and we all fall somewhere on it.” He rolls onto his side so he can see me, holding me close while his words try to shove me away.

He runs his hand through my hair. “Clara, you’re naturally good. You see the good in people, the parts that are worth loving.”

I shake my head a bit, something close to rage in my chest. “That’s not good, Walker. That’s me being naïve. You’re praising me for being a fool.”

He runs his thumb across my bottom lip, and I want to bite it, to put this emotion out into the world, but I hold back. Barely. “You say that, and maybe that’s part of it. But Clara, before you met us, you were on a path to become a hero. You wanted to save the world from the bad guys, to make the world a safer place.”

He rolls onto his back again, not taking me with him. “Then you met us. And now you’ve committed blackmail, illegally manipulated a surveillance mic, helped us break into a police station to plant evidence, and you’re what? Going to help us plan a heist tonight? This stuff, it’s jail time if we get caught. We fuck up and you could go to jail, Clara. Or worse.”

I prop myself back up, placing my hand over his heart, the solidda-dum da-dumthere easing the strain in my chest. “So could you, Walker.”

“Yeah, but I’m not good, Clara. None of us are. You’re different.”

I gather my thoughts, the rage still threatening to overcome the careful words I string together for Walker. “Walker, I made a choice with Bryce. I chose Trips over a system that wasn’t protecting me the way I’d hoped it would. I chose the methods you guys use to keep me safe, to keep all of us safe, because they work. Good isn’t the same as lawful, Walker. You guys break the law, but you aren’t bad people.”

He closes his eyes. “I’m selfish, hedonistic, and I’m an arrogant ass when I want to be, Clara. I know this about myself. I would rather spend time with good food and good art than tend to someone’s sickbed. Give me the choice between saving some random kid and one of Da Vinci’s notebooks, I’ll save the notebook every time. I meet a new person, and I immediately unravel how to trick them, how to prove to myself that I’m smarter, sneakier, better than they are.” Walker looks at me now, and the steel in his gaze is arresting. “I’m not a good guy. I’m not even the best of the bad guys.”

Sliding my hand up to his cheek, I run my thumb along his cheekbone. “Then maybe I don’t want to be one of the good guys either, Walker.”

He pulls me close again, some of the ache in my chest easing. “But for how long?”

I shake my head, even though he can’t see me. “As long as I like. It’s my life, and I get to choose what it looks like. Right now, I’m happy here.” I shift so I can pressmy lips to his, but he holds himself back. “I want you, Walker. I want your kindness, your cookies, your art, even your freaky ability to put on and take off personalities like coats. And if that means I have to be one of the bad guys, then I guess I’ll be a bad guy, too.”

“You can’t just pick when you’re the good guy or the bad guy, Clara. The bad, it sticks to you, like paint in your nail beds. It’ll keep you, lock you in until you’re so deep you don’t evenwantto see the light again.” His grip loosens, as if he’s scared to keep me with him. “I just can’t help but think that we shouldn’t have tossed you in the deep end like this. Doing this, it’s a high, Clara. And we fucking started you at the top dose. You might not actually want what you think you want.”

The tentative ease in my chest shatters. Under no circumstances am I going to let a man tell me what I do or don’t want. Not again. Never again.

Because, of course, that’s why I had to sit awkwardly on the couch while everyone else read the brief. He’s taking my choices from me. All because he thinks I’m high on danger?

I took weeks to recover from my brush with danger. Weeks. I spent hour after hour, day after day, alone in my room reconciling my actions, reframing the person I was, rebuilding myself from the broken bits left of my old life. Those are definitely the actions of a person high on a successful heist.

My barely tethered anger rears, the reins I’d wrapped around it snapping completely. I push out of his arms, bracketing him beneath me as words pool like flames on my lips. “Are you telling me what I feel, Walker? Can you somehow look at me and guess the future? Can you name my regrets before I have them? Because unless you’re some kind ofpsychic, you’d better get off your high fucking horse. I’m a big girl, Walker. I might not know everything about what you guys do, but if you for one second believe I’m too high on danger to know my own mind, you’d better fucking walk out of this room and not come back. Because I sure as fuck thought you knew me better than that.”

His dark eyes lock on mine, his own anger reflecting my own. “You know what? You’re right. I’m not a psychic. I’m just one of the guys you’re fucking.”

“So that’s it? You’re just my friendly neighborhood fuck buddy, warning me about the ambient high on this side of the street?”

His face falters, a pitch-black ache coloring his demeanor, before he scrambles backwards, out from under me and onto his feet on the other side of the mattress. “If you don’t want my advice, then don’t take it, Clara. I’ll be one of your fuck buddies. I’ll be your friend. But don’t ever count on me to be your white knight. I’m not the type.”

“Well, thank God I’m not some fucking damsel in a tower, then.” My words burn hot against my tongue as I look at this man across a mattress, the bedding still rumpled from our night together.

I want to apologize so badly I physically ache with the need. There should be peace between us. I need last night to mean something—to not just be some mindless fuck, but a new beginning.

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