Page 58 of My Vigilante Valentine

He squeezed once, grounding me.

“We’ll stop him,” he said, both his voice and his eyes reflecting the fierce promise.

At that moment, I probably should’ve been nervous. Like I’d said, anyone would be. But with a guy like Jax sitting across from me—still holding my hand—it was kind of hard to feel anything other than completely safe.

Dangerous mission, or no.

I squeezed back before forcing my brain back to logistics. “About those rules…”

“Whatever it takes,” he cut in. “Whatever we need to do to make this convincing, I’m in.”

“Are you sure?”

He nodded once, sharp and decisive. “But we start slow, build up to it. Make it look natural.”

“Like we’re actually falling in love,” I murmured.

He swallowed hard. “Yeah.”

I glanced down at our joined hands, still resting on the table between us.

This was just pretend.

Just an act to catch a killer.

“When do we start?” I asked, looking up at him through my lashes.

His expression softened. “We already have.”

His fingers tightened slightly, like he was debating whether this was too much. But then, before I could overanalyze it, he lifted our joined hands and pressed a kiss to my knuckles.

And as if to prove his point.

The gesture was so smooth, so natural, that for a second, I forgot this was all for show. Truth be told, I forgot my own name. And his. And what year it was or who was president.

What were EMTs trying to determine when they asked those questions?

Oh, yeah—alert and oriented.

I was not that.

And then I caught Wednesday’s slack-jawed expression from behind the counter, and reality came crashing back.

We were doing this to catch a killer.

Did I have very real feelings for my fake boyfriend?

Abso-freaking-lutely.

But was I planning to let that ruin our ruse before we got our guy?

Nope.

And I reminded myself of that fact over and over again as Jax’s thumb traced circles on the back of my hand. His eyes never left mine, and still, I held strong.

Because what was the point of forcing my way onto Team Blade—or creating Team Blade in the first place—if I was just going to put our missions at risk in the name of a crush?

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