“So what are you suggesting?” Charlie asked when Will stopped in front of him.
Will thought a moment. “We have to hit them first.”
“What?”
“It’s our only choice,” said Will. Even as he said it, he didn’t fully believe himself, but the words kept pouring out of his mouth anyway. “They won’t see it coming, not now. We gather up a tactical arsenal and strike out at them first—get them to understand what’s going to keep happening if they don’t back off.”
“Christ,” said Charlie in a whisper. He looked behind him, as if making sure Eva wasn’t listening. “Will, you can’t be serious! I’m a fucking handyman, I’m not a soldier. I’d get my ass killed in a heartbeat!”
“I won’t let that happen,” said Will. “I’ll give you the training you need.”
Charlie shook his head and started shifting from foot to foot. “No, man, no… I don’t… I don’t like this.”
“Give me time to get the plan together,” said Will. “You’ll feel better when you can see it. This has to happen, Charlie. I have to protect her.”
“Protect her?” said Charlie.
Will froze, blinking. He hadn’t realized he’d said that. “I have to protect Eva.”
Charlie fell silent and looked hard at Will. He looked very much like he wanted to argue, but didn’t have the words, or the balls, to do it. Whatever the reason is fine with me, just keep your mouth shut.
“Might as well clean up the blood on the floor and open up for the day,” said Will as he swiped his handgun off the table and stuffed it into the holster under his shirt. He walked around Charlie. “They won’t be back for a while.”
Behind him, he could hear Charlie talking to himself, incredulous, shifting around in discomfort. Will didn’t care. He had another issue to attend to. He stalked out the back door and out into the meadow to look for Eva.
~ FOURTEEN ~
Eva sat in the cool shade of the forest meadow and absently picked flowers. She could hear Charlie’s and Will’s loud voices from the open back door of the bar. In her mind, the fight echoed and replayed over and over, like it was on a broken feedback loop. The whole thing couldn’t have lasted two minutes, and yet Eva felt ten years older than she had when it began, and in her head everything played in slow motion.
She could still see Will standing there, hovering over the unconscious man on the floor, the man he had already defeated. Among the books she had devoured in her life, Eva had read many from the great warriors and generals of history, including the fictional ones. She couldn’t remember a single honorable warrior who brought death to an enemy he had already defeated. It was a scorched-earth policy, the actions of a man full of rage, not of a cunning warrior only looking for victory. It was desperate.
Eva knew from the second she saw him that Will was dangerous, and now she had seen it first-hand on more than one occasion. He wanted so badly to kill that man—to kill all of them.
But he didn’t, said a voice in her head. He gave injuries that heal. Shallow cuts. Broken bones. Eva winced as the sound of that man’s arm cracking days before echoed in her mind. Up until that moment, he has gone out of his way not to kill anybody.
Will, the enigma. The warrior poet. Eva felt her heart twisting and breaking, trying to wind around the reality of him. Underneath her confusion was a sincere relief that she hadn’t had to watch anyone die today—not just her brother, or Will, but anyone. She wasn’t fierce like the heroines in her books, or like Will himself was. She didn’t want to watch someone die. And she didn’t want to watch someone kill.
Suddenly the forest wind was chilly rather than comforting on her skin. Eva picked herself up from the meadow and brushed off her dress, and then wandered back toward the house, away from the bar. She scuffled inside slowly and into her room, dropping down heavy on the edge of the mattress.
A few minutes must have gone by as she sat there, lost in the quiet, staring at the curtains in the breeze, because she went from hearing nothing but the leaves rustling in the trees to hearing the sharp rap of knuckles on the half-open door of her bedroom.
It startled her to find Will standing in the doorway. She swallowed and gave him a deep once-over, uninterested in interacting with the growling animal that had pushed her out of the bar. But something was soft and numb about him. Which Will is this?
“May I come in?” he said.
Eva didn’t answer. She lowered her head and stared at the hands fidgeting in her lap. Will waited a few polite seconds before he stepped inside anyway and sat on the bed next to her.
When his voice came out, it was that same honey-sweet quiet baritone she loved. “Are you all right?”
Eva rubbed her eyes. “Yes. I’m not hurt.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She let out an exasperated huff, a nervous half-laugh. “Well, then no, I’m not all right. I just watched you kick the shit out of men and almost kill one of them, so…”
“I didn’t want you to see that, Eva. I asked you—”
“I know, I know. ‘Stay in the office. Eva, just do what you’re told and everything will work out fine,’ ” she said, the words spilling out of her mouth before she could stop them. “I’m sick of hearing that. I’m sick of being a bystander in my own life. And if I had stayed in the office, you would have blown that guy away, right? So if you ask me, Will, it’s a damn good thing I didn’t listen to you.”
When she finished, she instantly felt lighter at getting those words out, yet still nervous as she waited for a reaction. Will fell quiet for a moment, and the room filled with the sound of her own nervous breathing and tears. When did I start crying?
Will reached over and wrapped one of his hands around both of hers. He squeezed them tightly until her anxious fidgeting stopped. The warmth of his hands against her skin was so enveloping that Eva let out a tired little groan under her breath at the sensation. Angry as she was, she couldn’t stop herself from clinging back, twisting her fingers in his.
“Why did you do that?” she asked in a teary whisper.
Will leaned until his head rested on top of hers. He said, “I have to protect you.”
Eva turned and made him look into her eyes. “You did protect me. You have every step. And you haven’t had to kill anybody yet to do it. There’s no reason to start now.”
“They’ll keep coming, Eva,” he said, his voice breaking. “They’ll keep coming, and I can’t let you die.” He dropped his forehead onto hers.
They grasped each other’s hands as if some unseen force would otherwise pull them apart. Eva felt an inexplicable and overwhelming rush of emotion crash into her as the sensation of Will’s touch pulsed against her stimulated skin.
“I don’t want you to die,” she said. “You’re running headfirst into battle with no armor, Will, don’t you see that? I know we just met, but I know this isn’t you. I know you’re a smarter warrior than this… this suicidal berserker that you are now.”
Will surprised her by giving her an enormous grin. “Of course you know what a berserker is.” He pulled one of his hands up to run through her hair and caress the side of her face. His touch made her feel electric, alive, and Eva nuzzled the side of her face into his palm. “Because you’re an incredible fucking woman that has no business understanding my world.”