She was choking on questions she had no business asking. Mainly, like, why had Sahvage drawn that line? Two consenting adults and all that.

Except there was only one consenting adult, evidently.

As Sahvage sat down across from her with some toast and a cup of coffee, she tried to smile in a casual, no-problems-over-here kind of way. The fact that she hadn’t had any eggs or bacon to offer him, and that it had been a miracle there had been enough coffee for them both to have some, was a commentary on how badly the last few weeks had been going for her.

And everything they hadn’t done in bed was just the shit cherry on top of it all.

While they ate, they didn’t say much . . . so all there was in the house, in the whole world, it seemed, was his crunching through the toast and her spoon hitting the side of her bowl. But the thing was, she didn’t trust herself to broach the elephant in the room.

Yeah, that wasn’t going to go well. She was frustrated and angry about a lot of things, and he was going to get double-barreled with stuff that didn’t have anything to do with their horizontal issues—

She closed her eyes.

“You okay?”

Keeping a curse to herself, she nodded. “Oh, yes. I’m all right.”

He pushed his crumb’d plate away. “So I’m going to go get some ice.”

Mae looked up. “What?”

“For your brother. I need you to stay here. It’s the safest thing—and I have a car I can use.” He got up, his chair scraping back on the floor. “It shouldn’t take me that long.”

“Ah, there’s a gas station not all that far from here.” Except she felt a territorial urge to do the ice buying. That was her job. “But I could always just—”

“Get into another accident?” he said as he took his dishes to the sink. “Like last night? We all know how well that went.”

Mae frowned. “Excuse me, as if I planned that.”

Sahvage braced his palms on the counter and hung his head. As his jaw made circles, she was disappointed he was struggling to control his temper. She wanted an argument.

And that made her a bitch, didn’t it.

“Is this about the Book again?” she demanded. “Because we’re done disagreeing on that subject.”

“You’re right about that.” He shook his head. “I’m not trying to talk you out of anything anymore. I never should have gone there in the first place.”

“Thank you.” Mae exhaled in relief. “And I’m sorry for getting so defensive. I’m glad you finally see where I’m coming from.”

Sahvage nodded and then stared off into the narrow distance between him and the shuttered window in front of his face. It was impossible not to study those hard features and powerful body without thinking about what they’d done in the dark. But there was nothing sexual at all about him at the moment. He was somewhere else in his head, far away even though she could reach out and touch him.

“I won’t be gone long,” he said eventually. “I mean, I’ll have to drive my car across town, but yeah, it shouldn’t take a lot of time.”

“It’s okay. Like I have any kind of schedule.”

Actually, she had work to do so she could keep this roof over her head. Assuming she made it through this, she was going to need to live somewhere.

“And I have to call Tallah,” she heard herself say.

After a moment, Sahvage turned his head and looked at her. Something about the way he was so self-contained made her feel like—

“Don’t say it,” she whispered, a dull, lonely ache setting up shop in her heart. “Don’t say goodbye. I’d rather just . . . have you not come through the door again than have to go through the words.”

Besides, that way, she could be ever on the verge of seeing him again. A goodbye was a closed door. Nothing was . . . nothing.

“I don’t want closure,” she said in a weary voice. “I’m really fucking tired of closure.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

Yeah, sure, she thought. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did.” Mae smiled a little, but couldn’t keep up the farce. “I would leave me if could.”

“I told you, I’ll be back soon. This won’t take me long.”

That was how he left things.

And he didn’t look back as he walked out into the garage.

• • •

Sahvage was way in his head as the door bumped shut behind him, but he had enough presence of mind to wait for Mae to walk over and lock the dead bolt. When she didn’t, he opened things back up, intending to remind her to come across and flip the copper mechanism.

Down the short hallway, she was still at the kitchen table and had put her head in her hands. She wasn’t crying; she just looked as if she couldn’t hold herself up and needed her elbows to keep her face out of her cereal bowl.

It took everything in him not to go back in there, and take her into his arms, and tell her everything was going to be okay. But he didn’t like making promises he couldn’t keep.

So instead, he reclosed the door and reminded himself that the thing they were really worried about getting into the house was already locked out. Mae was safe.

For a moment, before he left, he stared at the spot her car had been parked in. Now there were only oil stains and marks where the tires had traveled up and back so many times, and he imagined her parents parking here in the past, too. Pictured how many times the family, including her brother, had gone in and out of the door he had just used to leave her.

He truly understood where she was about Rhoger. He’d been there with Rahvyn. And fuck, if he believed in miracles? In fate? In the universe being a right and just place? He might trust that he and his first cousin could be still reunited and if Mae brought her dead back, there would be no regrets.

But he didn’t buy into that existential justice shit anymore.

And damn it, Mae was going to thank him for what he was about to do. Maybe not right away, but later . . . when nature was not interfered with and she was not in so much pain. Then, she would know he’d done the right thing.

Calming himself, he dematerialized out through the open shutter. But he didn’t go back to his place to get his shitbox ride.

He went downtown.

As he’d only been in Caldwell a month, he didn’t know streets’ names or anything. The good news was that the Commodore was the only twenty-plus-floor residential building around, and given that it had vertical light-up letters on its flank that spelled out “C-O-M-M-O-D-O-R-E”?

It didn’t take a genius to locate its roof.

And just like they’d planned, there was a lone figure waiting for him by the HVAC blowers.

As Sahvage re-formed in front of the guy, he kept his hands by his guns, but he didn’t palm up. No reason not to be civil, and besides, he’d gotten a sense of the Bastard over the daylight hours. While Mae had slept, he’d gone upstairs to find out who had been blowing up his phone.

And what do you know. The call he’d been waiting for.

“So you’re Sahvage, the male of the hour.” The fighter extended his dagger hand. “Balthazar.”

Sahvage nodded and shook what was offered. “You ready to do this?”

“Like I said on the phone, we should move fast.”