The only thing stopping me from turning my ass around and going back to the hospital is Killian hovering.
He hasn’t left since we returned to the penthouse, and I’m beginning to suspect he knows that if he leaves me unsupervised, I’ll be back at the hospital in a flash.
“Can you sit the fuck down?” Killian snaps. “She’s in the best place she can be. We have guards at every exit. There’s no way anyone can get in to hurt her.”
I glare at him. He doesn’t know that. And I barely catch myself from telling him the only person I truly trust with her safety is myself, and maybe him in a pinch, but seeing as he brought her back here yesterday, beaten and bruised, I’m even less inclined than I was before.
He sighs and drops his head back against the couch, his eyes tracking me as I pace back and forth across the penthouse, only pausing every so often to check my phone as if time would have magically passed.
“Orion,” Killian says, his voice softer than before. I flick my eyes up to meet his. “You really love her.” It’s not a question, because he knows it’s true.
I nod. “I do. I thought all I’d ever be capable of was infatuation and obsession, but somewhere along the way, she slipped into my cold, dead heart and made it beat again.”
He considers me. Killian has always thought emotions are more trouble than they are worth. Ever since the day I pulled the scrawny kid off the streets and began teaching him how to run an empire, he has shied away from anything that felt too much.
To begin with, I thought it was because of the things I had him do when he first started working with me. Someone had to take over the contract kills when I took a step back to grow my business, and Killian was more than happy to do that.
Eventually, we both stopped taking those jobs, not needing the money it generated, nor the reputation, as we forged a new one.
But he never faltered. Every time I thought I’d found my queen, he told me I was making a mistake, told me the emotions would be my downfall.
And maybe he was right. Maybe that’s exactly what Ember is. My downfall. My reckoning.
“She’s good for you,” he admits, and my brows shoot up in surprise, making him chuckle. “Don’t look so shocked. Just because I didn’t think the others were right, never meant I didn’t think it was possible for you to find what you were looking for. Ember is strong, resilient, independent as hell. It doesn’t matter what you throw at her. She’s always going to go toe-to-toe with you. That’s what you need in a partner.”
I sigh. “I don’t know if she’ll ever be able to see past the fact I killed Travis.”
“Killing him set her free. She’ll see that, eventually. It may not have been the reason you did it, but it did all the same.”
“I don’t think she’ll ever see it that way.”
“Have some faith, Orion.” He shakes his head. “You were adamant she was the one from the second you pulled her outof the wreckage. Every step of the way, you’ve been sure. Don’t second-guess yourself now.”
I cross the room to the bar cart and make quick work of fixing us each three fingers of scotch. It’s going to be a long night, and there’s no way I’m going to make it through completely sober.
I hand Killian’s off to him and drop onto the couch beside him. “You should work on finding your own woman, you know.”
For the first time since I met him, he doesn’t immediately shoot down the idea, and I can’t help but smirk. Maybe all he needed was to see that it can work for men like us.
I take a long drink of the amber liquor, savoring the smoky flavors as it burns the back of my throat in the best way.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, but I ignore it. There’s no one on either side of my business that I’m interested in speaking to right now.
It stops ringing, and I drain my glass, dropping it to the table in front of me before I allow myself to relax into the soft cushions. The last time I sat here, I had Ember in my arms, and my chest aches to feel her against me again.
She may think we’re done, that she can run from me. But even if she ran to hell itself, I’d chase her and drag her right back again.
Killian tugs his phone from his pocket and frowns down at the screen. “What?” he snaps into the receiver.
I glance over at him and watch as his features turn from irritated to furious, and I pull my own phone out, suddenly needing to know what the fuck is going on.
There are a few missed calls from numbers I don’t recognize, but that’s not abnormal. None of them has left a message, so it can’t have been that important.
And yet Killian looks like he’s about to lose his mind.
His eyes clash with mine, and my heart stutters in my chest at what stares back at me.
Regret.
