“Where’s Dee?” she asked as we walked past her bedroom.
“She’s with Ash and Andrew. I think being with them is helping her…” I opened the door and stepped aside, letting her walk in.
Her nervous energy increased, along with her heart rate. “Your room?”
I closed the door. “Yep. The best spot in the whole house.”
Kat folded her hands together as she checked out my room. She’d never been in here before, so she was taking everything in—the posters, the TV and desk. The bed. I waved my hand, turning the bedside lamp on.
She turned to the desk, staring at my Mac. “Nice computer.”
“It is.” I kicked off my boots.
“Daemon—” She stopped when I sat on the bed. Her fingers drifted over the lid of the Mac. “I am so sorry about everything. I shouldn’t have trusted him—I should’ve listened to you. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“Adam didn’t get hurt. He died, Kat.”
She faced me, her voice thick. “I… If I could go back, I’d change everything.”
I shook my head as my gaze dropped to my open hands. I curled them into fists. “I know we don’t always get along, and I know the whole connection thing freaked you out, but you knew you could always trust me. The moment you suspected Blake was with the DOD, you should’ve come to me.” Helplessness filled me. “I could’ve prevented this.”
“I do trust you. With my life,” she said, inching closer. “But once I thought he could possibly be involved with them, I didn’t want you involved. Blake knew and suspected too much already.”
“I should’ve done more. When he threw that damn knife at you, I should’ve stepped in then and not backed down, but I was just so damn angry.”
Her chest rose sharply, and papers on my desk stirred. “I was trying to protect you.”
I lifted my gaze. I knew she wanted that, but could that have been the sole reason behind her not coming to me about Blake? She was trying to protect me. “You wanted to keep me safe?”
“Yes.” She swallowed. “Not that it turned out that way in the end, but when I found out Blake and Vaughn were related, all I could think was that he played me—I let myself be played. And he knew how close we were. They’d do to you what they did to Dawson. There is no way I could have lived with that.”
Closing my eyes, I turned my head. “When did you know definitely that Blake was working with the DOD?”
“On New Year’s Eve. Blake showed up while I was sleeping, and I saw Simon’s watch in his car. He says Simon’s still alive, that the DOD took him, but there…there was blood on his watch.”
I cursed. “While you were sleeping? Did he do this often?”
She shook her head. “Not that I know of.”
Not that she knew of. Shit. I should’ve killed him…for a multitude of reasons.
“You should’ve never been worried about me getting hurt.” I stood, running both hands through my hair. “You know I can take care of myself. You know I can handle my own.”
“I know, but I wasn’t going to knowingly put you at risk. You mean too much to me.”
My head swung toward her. That was probably the first time I’d ever heard her actually say that. “And what does that mean, exactly?”
“I…” Her lower lip trembled. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“The hell it doesn’t!” I yelled. “You nearly destroyed my family, Kat. You almost got both of us killed, and none of this is over. Who knows how much time any of us have before the DOD comes? I let that dickhead go. He’s still out there, and as terrible as this sounds, I hope he gets what’s coming to him before he can report back to anyone. Fuck! You lied to me! Are you telling me all of this is because I mean something to you?”
Pink swept across her cheeks. “Daemon…”
“Answer me!”
“Fine!” She threw her hands up in the air. “Yes, you mean something to me. What you did for me on Thanksgiving—that made me…” Her voice cracked. “That made me happy. You made me happy. And I still care about you. Okay? You mean something to me—something I can’t really even put into words because everything seems too lame in comparison. I’ve always wanted you, even when I hated you. I want you even though you drive me freaking insane. And I know I screwed everything up. Not just for you and me, but for Dee.”
I stared at her.
Her next breath caught on a sob as tears filled her eyes. “And I never felt this way with anyone else. Like I’m falling every time I’m around you, like I can’t catch my breath, and I feel alive—not just standing around and letting my life walk past me. There’s been nothing like that with anyone else.”
The entire world was crashing down on us. That son of a bitch Blake—I should’ve killed him the moment I first saw him. I should’ve killed him now. Kat had lied to me. Adam was dead. Dee was destroyed. The DOD would be knocking on our doors any damn second, I still had no idea where Dawson was, and the only thing I could think about—cared about—was what Kat was telling me. That she had never felt this way about anyone before. That she couldn’t catch her breath and that she felt alive.
And she was talking about how she felt about me.
“But none of this matters,” she continued, “because I know you really hate me now. I understand that. I just wish I could go back and change everything! I—”
I moved too fast for her to track and clasped her cheeks. “I never hated you.”
She blinked, and God, I couldn’t stand it if she cried. “But—”
“I don’t hate you now, Kat.” My gaze locked with her watery one. “I’m mad at you—at myself. I’m so angry, I can taste it. I want to find Blake and rearrange parts of his body. But do you know what I thought about all day yesterday? All night? The one single thought I couldn’t escape, no matter how pissed off I am at you?”
“No,” she whispered.
My chest constricted. “That I’m lucky, because the person I can’t get out of my head, the person who means more to me than I can stand, is still alive. She’s still there. And that’s you.”
A tear trailed down her cheek. “What…what does that mean?”
“I really don’t know.” I chased after the tear with my thumb. “I don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring, what a year from now is going to be like. Hell, we may end up killing each other over something stupid next week. It’s a possibility. But all I do know is what I feel for you isn’t going anywhere.”
She started to cry harder, and it made me weak in the knees. I bent my head, kissing the tears away until that wasn’t enough and I needed a taste of her. I kissed her, growling at the way her lips felt against mine.
But Kat pulled back. “How can you still want me?”
I pressed my forehead against hers. “Oh, I still want to strangle you. But I’m insane. You’re crazy. Maybe that’s why. We just make crazy together.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It kind of does, to me at least.” I kissed her again. I had to. “It might have to do with the fact that you finally admitted you’re deeply and irrevocably in love with me.”
She let out a weak, shaky laugh. “I so did not admit that.”
“Not in so many words, but we both know it’s true. And I’m okay with it.”
“You are?” She closed those beautiful heather-gray eyes, and all I could think was how grateful I was she was still breathing.
Man, I was turning into a pansy.
But I didn’t care. Not when it came to her.
“It’s the same for you?” she asked.
My answer was to bring our mouths together again…and again. The touch was like tapping into the Source, sending lightning straight to the soul. The kiss deepened until there was no me, no her. It was just us, and it wasn’t enough—could never be enough.
I was moving without realizing it, and the next thing I knew we were on the bed and she was right where I wanted her—in my lap. And then she was beside me on the bed, and my heart was doing crazy crap in my chest. Such a human thing, but it was happening.