Page 7 of Cruel Kiss

"You came tonight and saved me. I recognize that. That man was going to get to my babies, but you came up my stairs and you stopped him, and I will be grateful for that until the day I die." I swallow hard and brace myself for the finale, the hardest part yet. "But you don't get to hold that over my head. One act of saving my life for all the ways you've ruined it. That's not how it works. That's a con, and I am so beyond done being conned."

I take a breath. My whole chest is heaving and I feel flushed and sick.

"I want you to get out," I conclude. "I want you to get up off my stairs and walk out my broken door, and I want you to leave me and my children alone. For good. I'll deal with Lev. I'll deal with the feds. I'll deal with all of it, the way I've dealt with everything else: by myself, because I am the only person I trust to get it right. Get out, Ronan."

For a long moment, he doesn't move.

Then he stands. Slowly. He unfolds up off the step until he's towering over me again the way he's supposed to. I have to tip my head back to keep my eyes on his, and I hate that, I hate that even now, he's bigger than me, but I hold his gaze anyway.

This is it, then.

This is goodbye.

This is the last time I'll ever?—

"No," he says.

It's quiet. There's no heat in it. It is simply a no.

"'No'?" My voice climbs to an incredulous note that probably frightens the dogs down the street. "You don't get to say no. This is myhouse."

"I'll leave your house tonight," he says, so very reasonably, "and I won't come back inside without you asking me to. I'll respect every boundary you set. If you never want to look at me again, I'll live with that, and I'll deserve it." Then he shakes his head. "But I will not leave you alone. Not while Lev is out there. I will not do it. I will not take that chance."

"That's not your decision!"

"You're right. It's not. But I'm making it anyway."

The cold-hearted beast in me wants to scream that I don't need him, that I stuck a man like a Christmas ham with a chicken knife and held the top step and won, and if Ronan decides to pursue this course, I'll do the same thing to him without a second thought.

But I didn't win. Not truly. I just delayed the inevitable. If Ronan hadn't come when he did, I'd be the one zip-tied in a tarp instead. And Hayden and Isabella would be… well, it's best not to even think about what might've happened then.

I look down the stairs at the wet patch on the wall where the blood once was.

"You put us in this," I croak. "You did this to us."

"Yes."

"And now, you want me to let you protect us from the thing you caused."

"I don'twantthat," he corrects. "As a matter of fact, 'wanting' no longer factors into the equation. I gave up wanting things where you're concerned the second you handed me that napkin. All I'm telling you is what's real. There's a man out there who wants to hurt me, and he's figured out that the way to do it is through you. That's true whether I'm standing on your street or not. I can't undo it by leaving. I can only make you safer or less safe, and I'd rather cut off my own hand than do the latter." He steps back, toward the stairs, giving me room the way he always does. The room to run, the room to choose. "So one way or another, I'll be here, Calista Meadows. I'd say I'm sorry for that, but we both know I'm not."

I stand there at the top of my own stairs, in a hallway that's been scrubbed of a dead man's blood, four feet from where I almost got taken out of my life in a wool blanket, and I think about the two doors behind me and the two small people breathing behind them, still asleep, still safe, still mine.

I don't answer him. Not yet. I won't give him the satisfaction.

But I don't tell him to leave yet, either.

I'm just not quite ready to quit Ronan Akov for good.

3

RONAN

I don't go far.

She told me to get out of her house, and I did. But I didn't get out of her life. I told her I wasn't going to, and I meant that shit with my whole fucking chest. So I stand on her stoop in the dark, with the busted front door leaning against the railing, gazing up at the two windows where her children sleep.

Navi finds me there. He stops one step below me so we're eye to eye. It's a courtesy. He's always thought his extra inch of height over me was God's funniest fucking joke, but he knows now is not the time to be acting the fool.