Page 52 of Pain

To her credit, she didn’t even struggle. She just looked up at me, knowing, I thought, that I wouldn’t hurt her. “And what, I’m going to stay here and be safe while he kills someone else?” she asked softly. “That’s not the answer, Knight, and you know it. There has to be a better way. I’m not going to let Tinker die just because I’m too afraid to put myself in Devil’s hands again.”

Okay that was fair, but that didn’t mean I was going to give in. “We’ll figure something out. Make a plan. I’m not sending you back, and that’s final.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why are you so convinced you need to keep me, anyhow? What’s it to you, Knight?”

“I’m not going to let the girl I’m falling in love with go to him. Period.”

The words were out before I’d thought through them, and certainly before I’d given myself permission to say them. Hell, I hadn’t even realized they were in my mind.

I hadn’t realized I felt that way about her.

But as soon as I said it, I knew it was the truth. I’d been falling in love with her ever since that first day when she’d looked up and asked me for help and started crying—but then refused to cry when Mandy tended her wounds and refused to take any pain meds because she was afraid of getting too hazy. I’d fallen in love with her ability to talk to me and ask me questions, and with her willingness to help doctor a guy who’d tried to send her back to Devil.

I’d fallen in love with the way she responded to me in bed and put all her trust in me.

And I was in love with the way she made me feel. I knew I’d never feel anything like that again or with anyone else. And I wasn’t willing to let it go.

That didn’t mean she was going to agree, though, and right now, she was looking at me with very wide, very shocked eyes. Not that I could blame her.

I’d just told her I was falling in love with her. I wasn’t going to blame her if she turned and ran as quickly as she could right back into Devil’s arms, just to get away from the psycho who had fallen in love with her over the space of three days.

Then her face grew gentle. “That’s funny, because I’m falling in love with you, too,” she murmured. “I didn’t want to, and I’ve been fighting it, but it turns out you can’t stop yourself from feeling something like that. The problem is this is the only way. I’m not going to let you lose Tinker, Knight, and there’s no other way to keep him safe.”

“Saraya, you’re a smart girl, but I think you’ve got that wrong,” a voice said from our left. Saraya and I both turned to see Gemini and Mandy standing about ten feet from us, Gemini leaning on both the wall and Mandy for support. He was pale and breathing heavily, but he was upright, and I supposed that was a good sign, at least. He also didn’t look surprised by what he was seeing.

So I assumed Mandy had not only told him about the email she’d received from Devil, but also that she’d found Saraya in my bed when she came to deliver the news.

I wondered how long they’d been standing there but then realized it didn’t matter. They’d probably heard everything we’d just said, and I didn’t care. I wasn’t ashamed of being in love with Saraya, and I was ecstatic at the thought that she felt the same way about me.

But I needed help if I was going to keep her here. And I couldn’t have asked for a better set of brains when it came to that than Mandy and Gem. They were so clever they scared me sometimes.

In a good way. Mostly.

“What do you mean?” Saraya asked quietly.

Gem took three limping steps toward us and dropped his voice. “I mean,” he said, “that I think there might be another way. We were coming out to talk to you and overheard everything.” His eyes made their way from Saraya to me, considering, and then he nodded. “Meaning the phone call. We know what Devil is asking for. And we think we might have a way around it.”

“How the hell did you hear the phone call and come up with a plan already?” I asked.

He tapped me on the forehead. “While you two were fighting about how to tell each other you were in love, we were talking strategy,” he said simply. “Figured you didn’t need anyone else involved in that particular conversation, and we had more important things to think about, anyhow.”

He smirked at me, taking in the shock and fury on my face, and then turned back to Saraya. “The question is how far you’re willing to go.”

“All the way,” Saraya said immediately. “If you’ve got another way to get Tinker out of there alive, I’ll go as far as I need to go. I want him safe, and I want it now. If it means me not turning myself over to Devil...” She looked up at me, her eyes questioning, and I nodded.

If there was a way to do this without her putting her own life on the line for Devil, we needed to do it.

“Then we’re in,” Saraya said firmly.

I grinned at the ‘us.’ I couldn’t help it.

And Saraya grinned back, thinking, I was sure, the exact same thing as I was: that we were a team, come hell or high water, and there was something so right about that, so easy, that it felt ridiculous that we’d ever not been a team.

“Right,” Mandy said, either missing or ignoring the silent communication between Saraya and me. “Then here’s the plan. We’ve got to keep Saraya safe, first of all, and that means not letting her anywhere near Devil. I don’t think we take her there at all. Too good a chance of Devil seeing her.”

“If I’m not there, it’s going to be awfully hard to convince him that we’re trading me for Tinker,” Saraya noted.

Mandy pointed quickly at her, awarding her the point. “Which is exactly why I’ll be dressed as you. You’re wearing my clothes already, so that’s not hard, and we find a black wig so I look like you from a distance. I wear sunglasses or whatever to make it harder to recognize me.”