Page 31 of Lose Me In The Shadows

She turned over in his arms to study him. Luke looked young and vulnerable, shadows on his face. There was red stubble on his face, and she could barely resist stroking it to see if it felt as rough as it looked. She wanted to curl tighter into him and pretend the past week had never happened: not him playing her, not her shooting him, and not being kidnapped, beaten, and tortured by Chris and the Tweedles. It was easier than accepting that her time at the black site had changed her, in ways she wasn’t sure she even knew yet.

Before she could, Luke groaned next to her, his eyes opening. At first, he smiled at her, warm and sleepy.

“C’mere, sweetheart, I need my—” he began to tug her closer, then froze. Kara watched with knives in her gut as the warm look was replaced by blankness and his arms dropped away from her body, leaving her cold.

“Sorry, viper,” he enunciated. “I shouldn’t have touched you without your consent.”

Viper?

Kara’s mouth opened, then shut. He was right, he shouldn’t have touched her. That was right. These were the right words. She deserved that apology. So then why did she feel so awful? Was it the new nickname, and what it implied? Or was it his mockery of the word consent? She’d consented today to him holding her—she certainly hadn’t tried to pull away.

But then had she ever really tried to pull away when she’d woken up to his arms around her?

Had she ever not really consented?

What a fucking mind fuck.

Kara rolled away, lying on her back and staring at the ceiling. Luke lay next to her, not touching, not looking, saying nothing. Silence stretched, awful and accusatory between them. Kara considered getting off the bed and going back into the main cabin to join the others. Conor and Micah had saved her, they didn’t hate her the way Luke clearly did. And how the fuck dare he hate her in the first place? If anyone deserved to hate anyone—

“It’s funny, you know,” Luke began conversationally, interrupting her thoughts as he absently pulled at a loose thread on his sling. “When Micah said we needed to test you, I was adamantly against it. I thought you wanted to stay. And that day when I pretended to get you out, I was wracked with guilt for lying to you—and so deeply hurt that you didn’t want to stay.” He looked at her, pain and betrayal filling his previously blank eyes. “I thought I was the untrustworthy one. I hated myself for it. But turns out, the untrustworthy one was you.”

Kara felt the stab of his words deep in her chest. But he wasn’t done. He had to twist the knife first. “Do you hate yourself at all for what you did to me? Because it doesn’t seem like it. Seems like you’re pretty happy with yourself.”

It wasn’t like Luke to manipulate, and he wasn’t very good at it—not like Micah was. It hurt just the same. Maybe because he wasn’t doing it on purpose, just swinging where he could and if he hit the target, great.

“You’re a fucking hypocrite, you know that, right?” she told him, breathless with hurt and anger and…

…guilt. Yeah, that was guilt twisting the knife, too.

Luke, usually so perceptive, clearly wasn’t picking up on what was going on inside her. His green eyes were dark—not with lust but with anger.

“What, you don’t feel even the least bit of guilt or remorse for shooting me? It didn’t matter that you could’ve killed me?”

“I was never going to kill you,” Kara snapped. “If I wanted to kill you, I would’ve shot you in the chest, not the shoulder.”

He blinked, surprised. “And why was I so lucky to deserve both bullets?”

“Becauseyouwere the one I trusted the most. I really thought you were going to get me out of there, that you cared. Turned out I was just a game to you.Fuck this.”

Kara began to crawl off the bed, ready to exit the room and the conversation, when the plane hit turbulence and dropped briefly. Kara pitched forward, the floor flying up toward her face—

—but just before it hit, Luke grabbed her around the waist and pulled her backward against him. His body felt so good against hers: warm, safe, solid. He was angry at her, but he’d prevented her from getting hurt. And it had cost him. She could feel his groan against her throat, not sexual in nature like most of his groans, but one of pain. He’d pulled his shoulder when he’d stopped her fall. Although her stupid body apparently had a Pavlovian response to the sound of his groan, because it prepared itself like it couldn’t tell the difference.

“Thank you,” she said, a little breathless.

He stroked his fingers over her stomach, feather light and fraught with meaning.

“Don’t mention it,” he said gruffly, releasing her as he got off the bed and disappeared into the bathroom. She thought he’d abandoned her, except he reappeared a few minutes later with a soapy washcloth and first aid kit.

“You’re a mess,” he told her. “I need to check and make sure your ribs aren’t broken and treat those cuts so they don’t get infected. Shirt off.”

“No fucking way,” she said.

“Kara,” he warned.

“I don’t want to be naked,” she said, hating the tremble in her voice.

Luke must have heard it, because he visibly softened, approaching the bed and sitting down next to her.

---