to find myself. All those hours trapped and confined for one reason or another with nothing but the silence to keep me company had taught me how to lock onto the few things about me that truly mattered. Those that could never be stolen away.
I had my brothers. Men I'd chosen for myself and sworn to stand by through the worst the world might ever throw at us. And I had my music which even now seemed to writhe and pulse beneath my flesh. But there was something else sitting with me in the dark as my lungs burned and strained and I refused to head back up for air. A girl with blue eyes and the strength to tame monsters.
It hurt me to know how close I'd come to losing it with her. It felt like I'd been attacking myself. My own...heart. And I couldn't bear that. Because I needed to keep owning her. I needed to know that she was mine and I was starting to think that I might just be hers, too. I wouldn't have just lain down my life for anyone else the way I had for her when I'd taken that bullet. I knew it. She knew it. I was just too stubborn to voice what that meant, to allow the idea of the rules shifting to accommodate what I ached for so much. Because if I was honest with myself, I was afraid of claiming it. Of claiming her in any more ways than I already had. Just in case I couldn't figure out a way to keep her.
I pushed to my feet and breached the surface, sucking down a breath a moment before I would have started choking on the rancid water at the bottom of the lake.
When I turned back to the shore, I found four silhouettes waiting for me, standing in the thundering rain like it was where they'd always meant to be.
Blake and Kyan were holding Tatum's arms as she fought to get away from them, but as I strode back towards them with my control more firmly leashed at last, they released her.
She ran to me, taking no more notice of the freezing lake water than I had as she moved straight into it and by the time she made it to me, it was over her knees.
Tatum threw her arms around my neck, gripping the back of my hair in tight fists as she stared up at me, Kyan's drenched sweatshirt clinging to her body as it pressed against my bare chest and the rain continued to pound down on us.
"Don't you dare run from me again, Saint Memphis," she snarled like she had any right to tell me what to do.
"I've never run from anything in my damn life," I growled at her as I watched the rain trickle down over her cheeks and her grip in my hair tightened.
"Liar."
I narrowed my eyes, meaning to correct her, punish her, push her away, but the intensity of those blue eyes reflecting the storm up at me had me pausing and the truth spilling from my lips instead.
"I've never felt anything like I do when I'm with you, Tatum Rivers," I breathed and I couldn't even be sure that she could hear me over the rain crashing down on the lake. "And I don't warn you not to push me because I'm angry at you for trying. I warn you because I'm afraid of what I could do to you if my control slips when we're together and I do something to you that I can't come back from. It's too easy for me to be cruel, it's too easy for me to hurt you."
"I'm not afraid of you, Saint," she replied, the flare of passion in her eyes saying she actually meant that.
"That's just because you don't think you have anything to lose anymore."
"Or maybe I think I've got everything to gain."
I stared at her for a long moment wearing Kyan's hoodie with the rain washing lines of mascara down her cheeks, her hair bedraggled by the storm and lipstick smeared from the kisses I shouldn't have stolen from her and I swear she'd never looked so beautiful to me. Her imperfections were her perfections, the fire in her soul which I had ached to douse was now the thing I admired most in her. And the wildness I'd wanted to tame more than anything I'd ever known was making me crave a taste of that freedom