Page 51 of Legendary

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here.”

Reese picked up a shirt off the bed, which I guess I hadn’t realized he’d taken out and put it on, pulling it down his torso. “You sure? You are zoning out a lot lately.”

“I told you I’m fine. Are you done?” I was getting frustrated with his need to ask me if I was alright. I appreciated it, but fuck, I wasfuckingfine.

He narrowed his hazel eyes at me in a way that told me he actually wasn’t done. I knew that look and it brought me back to our early stages of friendship. That look never changed and it was just as annoying then as it was now. He crossed his arms over his chest and sucked his teeth, telling me he could stand like this all day and wait for me to open my mouth and speak words other thanI’m fine.

I let out a groan. “What do you want me to say, huh?”

He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I don’t know, Nick. How about you start by explaining why we’re here?”

“The fuck does that mean. Youknowwhy we’re here.”

He took a few steps back and leaned against the wall. “I mean I thought so, but from where I’m standing, I feel like you have other reasons. Reasons that seem to be taking precedence in your mind.”

I licked my lips and shook my head. “I’m confused. What are you getting at?”

Reese let out a short laugh. “You carried her to her room and slept in there to watch over her, Nick.”

“She passed out, Reese. I was being nice, I wanted to make sure she was okay. I didn’t know that was a bad thing.” I got up from the bed and squared my shoulders.

He slid his index finger over his chin in thought as if my words were actually making him think. He rolled his eyes. “Right. Let us add the fact that any time you’re in a room with her, you can hardly focus on anything else. Listen I don’t know if you think I’m fucking stupid, but I can assure you I’m not.”

I didn’t need this. I didn’t need a lecture from the one person who has only ever taken a handful of things seriously in his entire life. “No one’scalling you stupid, Reese, but this whole thing is really uncalled for. I’m one hundred percent in this. Lilith is the end goal. Helping our people and all the people we’ve met here is the end goal. So, I really don’t understand—”

“So, this has nothing to do with Dani.”

I felt my hands begin to ball into fists at my side. “No.”

“Not even a little?”

I could hear my teeth grinding together. “I’ve already said no.”

He pulled his hair out of the knot at the top of his head and when he looked at me, it was the most serious I’d ever seen him. “Fuck, Nick, you have been off even before we left, and I don’t know what that’s about. I’m not gonna push you with all your Jonah stuff and whatever’s going on with your fucking dad, but one thing you aren’t going to hide from me is this. I let you do your thing because you said it happened once, but it’s not worth explaining, so I let it go. But I’m not going to let you downplay something that could likely have a major impact on all of us.”

I ran my hands through my hair, my frustration starting to boil to the surface. “All this because I showed a little compassion for her?”

Reese pointed a finger at me. “No, Nick. That’s not it. You’re doing the one thing you always told me never to do. You have tunnel vision.”

“No, I—” But he cut me off.

“You have tunnel vision for a demon, hybrid, whatever the fuck she is and you think that no one sees it. You want to pretend like this is all for the sake of Heaven’s Gate and everything else, but come on,come on,I saw the way you clung to her after she tried to kill that kid. The way you cradled her fucking head when you took her to her room. Like fuck, you immediately asked about her after you woke up from your fucking coma!”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek because he was right. Well, he wasn’tcompletelyright, but he wasn’t completely wrong either. I wanted Lilith to answer for what she’d done, what she’d made all of us do without us even realizing it. All the demons and Enchanters I’d spoken to yesterday had told me as much of their stories as they felt comfortable and I wanted to do it for them as well, not to mention I wanted to see the look on stupid Ariel’s face when we came back victorious. There was a constant lingering thought in the back of my head, and it wanted me to come out of this with a beautiful, petite girl by my side. I was trying to prioritize my time with this mission while also figuring out how to get her to want to kiss me again. It sounded pretty pathetic, and I knew I should invest more of my time into one over the other, but Daniwasimportant. Maybe not to Reese, but she was to me.

“I’m focused, Reese, I am. Nothing has changed. I went into this knowing the end goal and I haven’t faltered from that. I can divide my timejust fine. Whatever is going on with the Dani side of things is on me and it’s my business.”

Reese clucked his tongue, his blonde brows coming together. “I was with you against all that shit with Markus and I, yet again, pursued another mission with you. That wasmychoice, and I don’t regret it at all because it’s what you and I do for each other. I didn’t sign up for you to divide your time between fighting Lilith and your one-night stand. Lilith is a much different beast than Markus ever was. He was a snake, but she is a literal monster, with so many weapons at her disposal, but you want to try to give even a fraction of your time to a hook up. Especially when said hook up literally went rogue yesterday!”

“I know what I’m doing! I’ve been right here. I have fought every single time right next to you since we’ve gotten here. Me and Dani, that…” I took in a breath, swallowing. “It shouldn’t matter to you.”

“It matters! If this is going to work, if we are going to make it out of this at all, you need to focus on what’s important. You want to stop Lilith, perfect. Me too. I can get behind that. What I won’t do is blindly follow you thinking you’re hyper focused on one thing, but really find out you’re just chasing after a piece of ass. I mean I’m pretty sure I’ve read that demons are tempting as fuck, but her pussy must have been fucking phenomenal if you’re even considering splitting your time.”

I didn’t think, I just acted. It was like my body wasn’t my own when I charged over to him and threw him against the wall. He let out a loud groan as we landed against the wood. My hands were fisted in his shirt and my body weight was pressed against him. My chest was heaving and all I felt was white hot anger. I didn’t like the idea of her being reduced to something that could be so easily thrown away. I especially didn’t like it coming from someone I trusted more than most.

I felt my best friend’s heart thundering under my fists. “It’s fucking insulting that you think that I would put my life and yours at risk like that. I know why I’m here, Reese, I haven’t forgotten that. Every day I wake up and we aren’t in Heaven’s Gate I fucking remember why we’re here.” He shoved at me, my stance faltering, but I rallied and pushed back against him. He huffed out a breath when he connected with the wall again. “Not everything is so black and white like you think it is. I didn’t tell you much about Dani and me because a lot had fucking happened. Reese, people died, people we knew andJonah—” I heard my voice crack a bit, so I stopped, closed my eyes for a second, then started again. “You had just started to accept her into this fucked up team we’ve made, and I wasn’t going to risk that by telling you details that you wouldn’t have accepted in the first place.” I brought myface closer to his so he could see my eyes and hear my words so very clearly. “You’re here because you trust me, so just trust that when it comes down to it that I will fight with you until my last dying breath. But also trust me when I tell you to watch yourfuckingmouth when you talk about her.”

His hazel eyes widened into saucers when I finished. He opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it as if he was carefully collecting all the words he wanted to say and exactly how to phrase them. He didn’t try to fight me back anymore. It actually felt like his muscles were relaxing and his eyes started to narrow as they scanned my face. I didn’t have to be the smartest guy in the room to know that my last sentence gave a lot away. Reese leaned his head back, letting it knock against the wall as he looked at the ceiling. He raised his arms in a surrendering move, and I removed my grip from his shirt, backing off.

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