Page 59 of You Don’t Kiss Your Brother's Best Friends

Wearily, he looked down at the wound and shrugged.

“It’s nothing.”

“Nothing?” I cried, leaping to my feet. “Andre, you got stabbed! I saw the knife! It’s—”

“It’s superficial,” he cut me off. “He didn’t nick anything important.”

“But…”

“I’ve had a lot worse than this,” he assured me. “And in much more inhospitable places.” He let out a deep breath, while looking me over carefully. Eventually, he set his hands on his hips.

“I didn’t know you had that in you,” he said admiringly.

“And I didn’t know you could move that fast.”

I tried dusting myself off, and realized I was no worse for wear. Everything else was a lost cause, though. The clothing I was wearing was utterly trashed. I was lucky I hadn’t been wearing my server’s outfit.

“How’d you know I was out here?” I asked.

“Bruschetta Joe. He came and found me. He said you came back here with Victor.”

“I did,” I replied. “Victor dragged me out here and served me up like fresh meat to this asshole.” I pointed downward. “Before I knew what was happening, he disappeared.”

Andre looked up at the sun and squinted. “Yeah, you’re not Victor’s type.”

“I know that now.”

“He was most likely trying to keep Jacob busy,” Andre went on. “We’re pretty sure he’s planning something. We just don’t know what.”

The wind swirled, blowing my hair around my face. I tucked it back, ignoring the bitter taste in my mouth.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” I choked, trying not to look down again.

Andre’s eyes settled back on me. There was compassion in them now, whereas before they’d been swimming with adrenaline.

“Yes,” he said simply. “You okay with that?”

I shrugged. “I guess I’ll have to be.”

“You know what he would’ve done to you, right?” he asked. “If I hadn’t showed up?”

I nodded, trying to swallow. The taste in my mouth only got worse.

“It’s okay to feel something,” Andre conceded. “You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t.” He took a step closer; his verypresence was reassuring. His hand was warm, as it slid perfectly into mine. “But don’t you dare feel bad.”

It was surreal, standing there over a corpse, holding the bloody hand of a man I’d met only a week ago. But somehow, it also felt like the most natural thing in the world.

“Men like this would kill you, in the span of a heartbeat,” he said coldly. “You mean nothing to them. They’d do it without even thinking about it.”

Abruptly he kicked the body lying between us. His lips curled back in a snarl.

“You see this animal? He killed a man by the name of Shane Driscoll, a good friend of mine. Blew him up during some botched operation, with an anti-personnel mine.” His snarl turned into something worse. “It got back to me that he even laughed about it.”

“Oh.”

“I drove a day and a half to be at Shane’s funeral,” he went on. “His twelve-year-old daughter sobbed for three straight hours in the pouring rain. No umbrella. Wouldn’t let anyone near her.”

I didn’t have to imagine the scene. I could read it in the pain on his face, commiserate with the agony in his eyes. Andre hadn’t just lived through that day, either. He’d relived it, over and over, in the most haunted recesses of his mind.

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