“I’m coming back. I swear it on Mama’s grave.”
The ice in my veins warms a few degrees.
“You better mean that, because if anything happens to you, I swear I’ll find you, bring you back to life, and then kill you myself for putting me through hell. You understand me, Rafe Ransom?”
My brother chuckles into the phone. “It’s a deal. I gotta go, Tempe. I’ll be hugging you in person soon. I’m so fucking sorry for all of this. I’ll make it up to you. Don’t be too hard on Saxon. He saved my ass. I’d be dead for real if he hadn’t thought this whole plan up. Love you, girl.”
He ends the call with my echoingI love youhanging in the air.
I push off my feet and stumble toward a wall. Kane’s large form comes toward me, and I wave him off. I’m not ready to deal with him yet.
“I wanted to tell you ... but this was the only way.”
“Bullshit!” I explode. “It wasn’t the only way.” I drag my gaze up to meet his.
Kane opens his mouth to speak and then closes it again.
“Youliedto me. You made me think ...” I don’t even want to say it again. “How could you do that to me? I’ve been one step up from a corpse for a goddamned month because you couldn’t trust me enough to tell meanything.”
“Temperance—” He steps toward me, and I hold up a hand to keep him back.
“All you had to do was tell me.”
His fists clench at his sides as another stream of tears sneaks down my cheeks.
“It had to look real.”
“Well, fucking great. I’m so glad it lookedrealfor you. And guess what?This is real too. How much I fucking hate you for this is real! How dare you?” I’m shrieking and I don’t care at all. I’ve been through hell, and I told myself I was to blame for every single moment of it. “You made me thinkI betrayed my brother and got him killed!”
Kane squeezes his eyes shut and dips his chin before drawing in a breath and staring me down. “You can hate me for the rest of your life, and I’d still do it all the same again.”
I suck in a breath. “You fucking—”
He interrupts me with a roar. “Because now, you get tolive!Thatis the only fucking reason I did any of it. For you. Because I love you.”
17
Temperance
The rough brick scrapes my back through my T-shirt as Kane’s booming voice echoes in the cavernous building. He closes the distance between us before I have a chance to process his words.
Not just words ... it’s a declaration that carries more power than an atomic bomb. It levels me, burning away all the anger and grief that have ravaged me for every waking minute of every day since I woke up thinking both he and Rafe were dead.
Kane’s palm presses against the wall beside my head as he stares down at me, his nostrils flaring and the vein in his temple throbbing.
“I’m sorry. So fucking sorry. I’d rather take a bullet than watch you cry another goddamned tear.” He reaches out, and rather than slap his hands away like I would have done only moments ago, I let him catch my tears on his thumbs and cup my face. “Please don’t cry.”
“You love me?”
His palm cradles my cheek as he studies my face. “Since the first time I watched you pick up a welding torch and I saw the real you. Not the show you put on for the world.” His eyes shut for a moment before his gaze bores into mine again. “I told myself I could let you go because it’d be safer than trying to keep you with me. That once this whole thing was over and it was safe, I’d leave the choice of what happened next up to you.”
If I thought my emotions were chaotic before, they’re nothing compared to the uprising being staged in my brain by the thunderous beat of my heart.
“You were going to let me go?”
He looks away before replying. “I didn’t think there was any possible way you wouldn’t hate me when this was over. I told myself I’d say good-bye and fade into the shadows, and let you have the life you were meant to have.”
“Without you,” I whisper.