Page 45 of Rune
“I wish I had more for you. But the fact of the matter is, we didn’t work with him. He wasn’t part of the same crew. It was the first time we met them—to do a deal. And shit went fucking sideways in a blink. One minute we were all standing there… then… chaos.”
I could see the ghost of that night on his face, the way it haunted him. It felt wrong to press. But I’d been waiting so long to know who killed my friend.
“What was his name?”
“Jon.”
“Jon? That’s it? Jon?”
“Not as rare as Rune, I’ll give you. But it’s all I have.”
“What did he look like?”
Rune waved a hand. “Six foot. Not built but not skinny. Just… average build. Brown hair. Dark hair. He had it shaved pretty short, and it was nighttime, so I can’t say brown or black. Everything about him was just… average.”
“So you wouldn’t recognize him if you saw him again?”
“I didn’t say that. I’d recognize him for sure. But there’s just… there’s nothing else I can say about him that would help you figure out who it was.”
“It’s something. At least I’m not chasing the wrong person anymore. If you’re not lying to me.”
“Baby,” he said, exhaling hard. “I see Vicky’s face damn near every time I close my eyes. Trust me, I’m not lying.”
There was no mistaking the pain and regret in his eyes. I had no reason not to trust him.
I didn’t even realize my lower lip was wobbling until Rune’s brows lowered. “What’s wrong?”
“I almost killed you,” I said, blinking hard as my eyes stung. God, it felt like all I’d been doing lately is crying.
Rune pushed off the wall and moved toward me, crouching down in front of me and resting his forearms across my knees.
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think you were going to actually do it.”
“I’d been planning to. I wanted to.”
“But then you saw I was a person and you couldn’t do it.”
“If you killed her, you would have deserved it, though.”
“As someone who was there, I gotta say I agree with that. But that doesn’t mean you are someone who is capable of enacting that kind of justice. There’s nothing wrong with being too soft for that. Soft is underrated.”
My heart stuttered as he looked up at me.
“No one has ever thought of me as soft.”
“That’s just because you’re comparing yourself to your sister. She’s gooey. In comparison, you feel hard. But you’re not.”
“And, what, you’re hard?” I asked.
“Again, compared to my brother, yeah. But I think it’s important not to let yourself get calloused. No matter how much life tries to demand it of you.”
His arms were still resting on my thighs, and his hands shifted slightly to give my thighs a quick squeeze. My focus narrowed to that contact. It was meant to be chaste, reassuring. But try telling that to my body. It was a five-alarm fire blazing through my body, making my breathing go quick and shallow as my heartbeat thrummed in all my pulse points.
Up so close, Rune would have needed to be clueless to miss the change.
Testing my reaction, his fingers drifted up ever so slightly, inching up my thighs.
A shiver slid down my spine as a small gasp escaped me.
