Page 275 of Lodestar

“Okay. I didn’t want to freak her out or anything.”

Inside, I melted. Deeper still, I cried for what he’d endured. On the outside, I just tugged him closer to me, wanting his arms around me, hell,needingthem.

Needing him.

“You won’t. She already thinks you’re Prince Charming. Why do you think she came to you to save me?”

He snorted. “You’d have saved yourself eventually.”

“Your faith in me is too strong. My stubbornness is my downfall.”

“It’s also a survival mechanism. I thank fuck for your obstinacy because it means you’re here, and that means I can do this…” He rubbed his nose down the side of my chin and whispered, “…and this.” His lips pressed gently to mine and with a soft breath, I dived into him, escaping this horrible world for those endless moments that he held me.

That he let me be Star.

It was chaste because of Kat, but it meant so much for that reason alone.

This was connection. Pure and simple. This was…love.

After a couple moments, we settled together in a spoon formation. I rested against him and he pressed his chin to my shoulder, and for a while, we just stayed that way.

Decompressing, I guessed, was what we were doing.

It took me long enough to realize that I’d still been on edge the whole time he’d been downstairs with Finn, and I finally felt like I could inhale deeply enough to flood my lungs with the oxygen I needed.

With a soft kiss on my cheek, he murmured, “You okay to talk about this?”

“Yes. Kat sleeps as if she’s in an iron lung after a nightmare, but she’s got earplugs in any way. Aoife was a lifesaver and had some on hand so we can whisper without disturbing her.”

He hummed as he slotted our fingers together and bridged them over my belly.

“I think,” he said slowly, as if he were thinking out loud, “that the Sparrows believe the kids saw them at this weird meeting they were having where they used their children as pawns to protect themselves, and they think that they can identify them. Which, considering their ages, is a stretch.

“Or, they think Reinier or DeLaCroix will ID them to save their own hides, and they’re just cleaning up the mess to stay untouchable.

"They’re both in positions of power—attorney general and White House chief of staff—so they have a lot to lose.”

The rage that churned inside me was a stark contrast to the calm I’d been feeling since he’d wrapped me in his arms.

“I fucking hate them,” I hissed, the words bubbling with my vitriol.

“I know. I do too. Tonight, I learned where they’ll both be on Wednesday and it’s on the island…”

“Which island?”

“This one.”

“You’re shitting me! They’re meetinghere?” I wriggled around to face him. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“I’m not. They’re going to meet at his office. According to Smythe’s planner, it’s to discuss some law they’re trying to hoodwink Congress into, but we both know that’s BS.”

“Meeting in person is high risk, isn’t it?”

“Hardly. It could be passed as work. Foundry’s the head of the Justice Department. Smythe could easily justify a meeting.”

“We need to grab them,” I muttered. “It makes our job a lot easier if they’re together and we can contain them simultaneously.”

“I had a feeling you’d say that.”

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