“I can’t fucking get it,” she muttered.
He still had a chance to make her think clearly. It was one last thread for him to grasp on and use because the rest of him felt battered like an old flag from the winds of chaos that this woman could create.
“It’s a big night—you know this is a stupid fucking move,” Luca told Penny. While the black fabric of her cropped tank top and cargo pants melted into the shadows around her, he could still see the way she tensed at the truth. “So you make a clean kill but then what—you spend the next six blocks in a gunfight with every person that’s hunting you.. There’s got to be a better way, Penny.”
“She can’t keep living.”
That was it.
That was all she said.
And God knew he understood ...
Penny was born into privilege. She had every reason to succeed. Except the people meant to love her had been the same people who hurt her in ways no one would ever truly comprehend. There was no innocence—no chance to be innocent. No gray when the world had to be so very black and white for her. She couldn’t be normal when they had broken her first, and then someone else had to go and make her the exceptional.
Only to tell her she couldn’t be that, either.
An exceptional lie.
He wondered if her entire life felt like it had led up to this moment. If so, then yes, he understood perfectly well why she wanted to take her chance tonight. Despite the risks, he might even do the same.
He simply didn’t think she had to.
“Penny—”
“She can’t keep being free,” Penny snarled from the ground.
“But you could do this in a better way.”
He dared to take a step forward, but that was the wrong move. The noise of his sneakers scuffing the roof had Penny jerking away from the rifle. She moved like lightning, sliding gracefully to her feet and darting through and beyond the stream of light to push him back toward the stairwell leading inward from the hatched door.
“Stay out of the light,” she told him.
Not go.
Not leave me alone.
Not even this is my business.
All of which he would have understood and even respected. Instead, she told him to stay out of the light, and he knew why. Anyone higher might see them—her. Him. He locked stares with her, desperate to find what she had left behind there. That thing growing between them. He was sure he found it in her wide blue orbs that reflected fear when her hand hit his chest again and she hissed, “Goddammit—stay out of the light, Luca.”
“Penny—”
“I didn’t have a clear shot.”
That was all she said before she turned away, ready to head back for her rifle. The festering anger and panic that had accompanied him from the moment he realized she had left him behind in Nevada finally came rushing to the surface when she dared to walk away from him at that moment.
“Don’t fucking walk away from me again.”
His hand stuck out hand, finding the back of her neck in a tight grasp that had Penny gasping when he yanked her back to him. She spun around under his handling, and he was already closing the distance between them. His mouth crushed to hers, and the kiss that consumed them both reminded him of drowning. He knew he needed to breathe, that he should try to come up for air. Except he didn’t want to when he could taste her on his tongue, and the very heat of her mouth proved she was alive.
The kiss ached. Every stroke of their lips came rougher than the last. His chest took the pummeling from his racing heart in stride, but he couldn’t say the same for his nerves.
Or his soul.
That was all hers anyway.
His hand loosened at the nape of Penny’s neck, but not enough that she could move away from him when he murmured against her lips, “If you do end it here, then I’m here to help you do it. No matter what. You’re not alone. You don’t have to be alone—I’m here. Let me be here, Penny.”
Because didn’t she know?
He’d never wanted to stop her.
Only help.
11.
Penny
IT was Luca’s eyes that could kill Penny. Those green-blue orbs of his that always seemed to stare right at her, landing on her with a heaviness that she could feel. No one ever looked at her the way he did. They either looked through her, overlooked her, or tried to find something they could change.
But not him.
Not her Luca.
Because he was.
Hers.
She just wasn’t sure if he knew it—it’s why he was one of the last things she felt like she had to worry about while she finished her business. Before this, he had been her friend, and then for years he had been a piece of her past that just wouldn’t let go. He had become her temptation, too. She didn’t doubt that after this, he would still be hers in some way.
They could get back to it.
Maybe.
Except he kept coming back. Finding her at all the wrong times. Fucking me up, she thought.
His intense stare still hadn’t let go of hers when she dared to ask him, “Why do you keep trying to save me? Haven’t you figured out that I don’t exactly need saving? I’m not the damsel here—I’m not even sure there’s a hero.”
If anything, she was one of the villains. Just in a different way.
Luca’s mouth twitched upward in the corner, almost like he might smirk. “I never tried to save you—that was everybody else’s job. I only ever wanted to help.”
Penny pulled in a shuddering breath that ached. “One might say leaving is a good indication that I don’t want help, Luca.”
“It’s not that you don’t want my help—you think you don’t need it. There’s a difference, Penny.”
She could still taste him on her lips. Never had a man grabbed her so roughly at the back of her neck without the intention of doing her body some kind of harm ... except for him. He’d kissed her like his life depended on it, and for a second, she was sure hers had. The imprint of his mouth would linger on hers for days, she was sure.
But it was wonderful.
And horrible, too.
Penny inched backward, only a slice of her pinky finger sliding into the stream of illuminated color from the security light overhead. Luca didn’t let her move very far before his fingers flexed at her nape and he murmured, “I know you went back—home, I mean. And little Cross, well you promised him you were going to try to go back, right? Are you still trying or did you lie to him?”
Low blow.
So fucking low it hurt.
Penny’s chin quivered with the emotions that she tried to clench between her teeth. It didn’t work. She was all too aware that every second she was away from her gun was one that was lost forever. She would never get it back.
Not that it mattered.
It was already too late.
“You don’t get to do that,” she told him, wishing so badly that her fingers didn’t itch with the desire to stroke the lines of his face with her fingertips. Carved from stone and handed to her like God had taken time on this man just for her ... Luca didn’t know the power he possessed over Penny. A part of her hoped he never would. “You don’t get to tell me you’re not going to stop me, but in the next breath try to manipulate me into—”