Page 289 of Immune

“What thing?” I push.

“Making me feel like I’m literally one hiccup away from being handled.”

That cuts a little cleaner than I expect it to, but I nod once. Then I remove the knife from my belt. Dakota’s entire body grows still as she watches me place the knife on the floor between us. The second knife from my boot joins the first, and then the gun from the back of my waistband. Then the spare magazine. And then the thin wire loop I keep hidden up my sleeve.

Her eyes track every movement before she finally asks, “What are you doing?”

“Giving you proof.”

“Of…?”

“That if you’re waiting for me to treat you like a threat, I can at least do it honestly,” I tell her.

She looks down at the weapons on the floor, and then at me. “That’s genuinely the least comforting sentence anyone has ever said to me.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“Yup.”

“You’re supposed to comfort me,” she mutters.

“I’m supposed to be telling you the truth, remember?” I counter.

Her laugh cracks out of her. “Great.”

I take one step back from the weapons laid bare between us. Then another. Then I say, “Look, here’s the truth. You are dangerous.”

Her face shuts down and I hate it instantly. Hate it with a fucking passion.

So I say the rest before she can run away with only the worst piece of it. “But so am I.”

She doesn’t move.

“That doesn’t make us unsafe.”

The word sits there between us, right there next to the weapons on the mat.

Plain.

Ugly.

And true.

Dakota looks down at the weapons again. “You think that makes sense?”

“I kind of think you know it does.”

“I killed three men in that hallway,” she reminds me, as if I could forget.

I shrug. “They cornered you, they hurt Ewan, and they tried to put a collar on you.”

Her jaw tightens. “And that should make me feel better? Because they deserved it?”

“No.”

“Then what?”