Her chest rose sharply, and papers on my desk stirred. “I was trying to protect you.”
I lifted my gaze. I knew she wanted that, but could that have been the sole reason behind her not coming to me about Blake? She was trying to protect me. “You wanted to keep me safe?”
“Yes.” She swallowed. “Not that it turned out that way in the end, but when I found out Blake and Vaughn were related, all I could think was that he played me—I let myself be played. And he knew how close we were. They’d do to you what they did to Dawson. There is no way I could have lived with that.”
Closing my eyes, I turned my head. “When did you know definitely that Blake was working with the DOD?”
“On New Year’s Eve. Blake showed up while I was sleeping, and I saw Simon’s watch in his car. He says Simon’s still alive, that the DOD took him, but there…there was blood on his watch.”
I cursed. “While you were sleeping? Did he do this often?”
She shook her head. “Not that I know of.”
Not that she knew of. Shit. I should’ve killed him…for a multitude of reasons.
“You should’ve never been worried about me getting hurt.” I stood, running both hands through my hair. “You know I can take care of myself. You know I can handle my own.”
“I know, but I wasn’t going to knowingly put you at risk. You mean too much to me.”
My head swung toward her. That was probably the first time I’d ever heard her actually say that. “And what does that mean, exactly?”
“I…” Her lower lip trembled. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“The hell it doesn’t!” I yelled. “You nearly destroyed my family, Kat. You almost got both of us killed, and none of this is over. Who knows how much time any of us have before the DOD comes? I let that dickhead go. He’s still out there, and as terrible as this sounds, I hope he gets what’s coming to him before he can report back to anyone. Fuck! You lied to me! Are you telling me all of this is because I mean something to you?”
Pink swept across her cheeks. “Daemon…”
“Answer me!”
“Fine!” She threw her hands up in the air. “Yes, you mean something to me. What you did for me on Thanksgiving—that made me…” Her voice cracked. “That made me happy. You made me happy. And I still care about you. Okay? You mean something to me—something I can’t really even put into words because everything seems too lame in comparison. I’ve always wanted you, even when I hated you. I want you even though you drive me freaking insane. And I know I screwed everything up. Not just for you and me, but for Dee.”
I stared at her.
Her next breath caught on a sob as tears filled her eyes. “And I never felt this way with anyone else. Like I’m falling every time I’m around you, like I can’t catch my breath, and I feel alive—not just standing around and letting my life walk past me. There’s been nothing like that with anyone else.”
The entire world was crashing down on us. That son of a bitch Blake—I should’ve killed him the moment I first saw him. I should’ve killed him now. Kat had lied to me. Adam was dead. Dee was destroyed. The DOD would be knocking on our doors any damn second, I still had no idea where Dawson was, and the only thing I could think about—cared about—was what Kat was telling me. That she had never felt this way about anyone before. That she couldn’t catch her breath and that she felt alive.
And she was talking about how she felt about me.
“But none of this matters,” she continued, “because I know you really hate me now. I understand that. I just wish I could go back and change everything! I—”
I moved too fast for her to track and clasped her cheeks. “I never hated you.”
She blinked, and God, I couldn’t stand it if she cried. “But—”
“I don’t hate you now, Kat.” My gaze locked with her watery one. “I’m mad at you—at myself. I’m so angry, I can taste it. I want to find Blake and rearrange parts of his body. But do you know what I thought about all day yesterday? All night? The one single thought I couldn’t escape, no matter how pissed off I am at you?”
“No,” she whispered.
My chest constricted. “That I’m lucky, because the person I can’t get out of my head, the person who means more to me than I can stand, is still alive. She’s still there. And that’s you.”
A tear trailed down her cheek. “What…what does that mean?”
“I really don’t know.” I chased after the tear with my thumb. “I don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring, what a year from now is going to be like. Hell, we may end up killing each other over something stupid next week. It’s a possibility. But all I do know is what I feel for you isn’t going anywhere.”
She started to cry harder, and it made me weak in the knees. I bent my head, kissing the tears away until that wasn’t enough and I needed a taste of her. I kissed her, growling at the way her lips felt against mine.