Page 60 of Song Bird Hearts

The look she wears is going to haunt me for the rest of my life.

“They approached me a few years ago, and because I was bored with life and mediocracy, I accepted,” I explain as I rub my jaw. “I’ve never misled you to think I’m a good person.” I jerk my thumb at the man grinning wide by his car. “This guy really is part of the feds. I’ve had run ins with him over the years and that’s how he knows me. I’ve done bad things. I’m not the good guy in any story. I’ve had to kill to grow power, and money never comes without blood. I’ve kept some people alive though. I keptyoualive.” I take a step toward her and she tenses, but I don’t stop. “It started as a way to fight boredom, but then I saw you. Really saw you. And I realized you don’t just need protection. You need people who would burn the world down for you.”

“And you think you’re one of them?” Knox spits, angry. Now his gun points at me like it should.

“I know I am,” I say, my eyes locked on Valerie. “You know how I feel about you. You’ve tasted my loyalty.”

“And yet you never told me you were in the very organization trying to kill me,” she states.

Her voice still doesn’t shake, but I see it in her eyes now. Something has cracked. I did that.

“If I told you, you would’ve run,” I say, and it sounds pathetic now. I’m no better than the people who wilted her flowers to begin with. But I refuse to leave. I’ll be the stray dog that hides under the porch if that’s what it takes.

“Maybe,” she says. “But at least it would’ve been my choice.”

I reach for her when I’m close enough, but she takes a step back and Gilden steps forward to block my access to her. That step back breaks something deep inside me.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say, my voice hoarse. “That’s not where my heart lies. It’s here. With you. With this. I’ll bring you what you need if I’m able to. Their operations, names, and funding. I’ll dismantle it from the inside. It won’t be easy to get it. I’ll have to bleed. But I’ll bleed for you.”

Her eyes flicker, her bottom lip trembling. “I. . . I don’t want you to go,” she admits.

“I have to,” I tell her. “They’ll never trust me again otherwise. You won’t.” I lean in close enough to breathe her in one more time, in case it’s the last time. She’s wildflowers and whiskey and warm sin. “I know what I am,” I whisper. “But I also know what I want. And it’s you. It’s this. Let me prove it.”

And then I turn and walk toward the black SUV, the asshole standing in front of it grinning ear to ear. He’s getting exactly what he wants if I succeed: Incriminating information about the Foundation.

For the first time in years, my hands are empty.

Because obsession can make you possess something, can make you hold it tightly in your hands.

But love?

Love makes you leave it behind, and pray it’ll still be waiting for you when you come back.

Chapter29

Valerie

The fire crackles low in the hearth, casting amber light across the wooden beams of the main room. I sit on the floor, my back against the couch, as Kevin lies curled up like a meatloaf beside me. He’s snoring faintly, and every now and then, he kicks in his sleep and oinks quietly. I’m nursing a whiskey—two fingers, neat—and trying not to think about the way Wolf’s absence feels like a crack in the floor beneath me.

Gilden sits on the arm of the couch, his legs splayed as he rests his elbow on his knee. His shirt is wrinkled, more than usual, and he’d forgone shoes entirely, his loafers abandoned by the door. It’s the most casual I think I’ve ever seen him, but he’s not relaxed. Not really.

Knox stands at the far end of the room, leaning against the doorway with his arms crossed. His jaw is tight as he watches the fire like he wants to fight it. Of all of us, he has the most right to say, “I told you so,” but he doesn’t. God help me, he doesn’t.

I swallow. “I don’t know what to do.”

Gilden’s eyes soften on me. “You don’t gotta know,cher. That’s the trick.”

I turn my glass in my hands. “That’s not comforting.”

“Ain’t meant to be,” he replies with a small smile. “It’s just the truth. You can’t logic your way through this one. You just gotta trust your heart.”

I raise a brow. “That thing’s a damn mess. It got us into this trouble.”

“Even so. Mess or not, it still knows what it wants.” Gilden shrugs, then leans in, his voice gentler. “You still love him.”

I hesitate. “I. . . wasn’t even aware I did until he’d admitted everything. Even now, it makes sense though. In the way everything else makes sense. Like I knew it before I knew it and I just never looked too closely at it.”

Knox scoffs from across the room. “I think we should kill him the next time he shows his face.”

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