I cracked a smile despite myself. It’d only been a couple of months since she’d barged into our lives like a whirlwind, and she already knew me so well. Better than anyone except maybe Wylder, really. She was the first person I’d willingly shown my scars to. The first person I’d wanted to open up to.
I didn’t know how it’d happened. I barely knew what to do with the emotions that rushed through me whenever she was near. They were exhilarating but also unsettling.
I grappled with my words. “I don’t like how he keeps upping the ante. I feel like they’re backing us into a corner.”
“You always get us out of any corners we end up in.” She touched my cheek to turn my face so I’d meet her eyes. “You’re beating yourself up like you did over the shit Xavier pulled before, I can tell. But did you ever think that you did more than anyone else here managed? You’re the one who got him on camera to confirm it was him. You’re the one who figured out which apartment I should stay in so I wasn’t out on the streets where he’d have gotten to me that much easier.”
Whether it was her touch or her words, warmth flowed through me, melting a little of my sense of failure. She wasn’t wrong. It just didn’t seem like enough.
“I hadn’t looked at it that way,” I admitted.
“Well, I’m not going to forget it.”
She bobbed up to plant a gentle kiss on my lips, fleeting but sweet. Somehow the simple gesture squeezed my heart more than when that mouth had been wrapped around my cock. Not that I hadn’t enjoyed the latter a whole lot too.
When she drew back, she flashed me a conspiratorial smile—like we’d already figured out the answer together.
Resolve solidified in my chest. Mercy saw me, right through to my core, without pity or judgment. So what if I wasn’t sure how to handle the emotions she stirred in me? All that mattered was that I wanted to kill anyone who messed with her, preferably slowly and painfully. If Xavier had been in front of me, I’d have gotten started on it right now.
But he wasn’t. It was just me, empty-handed.
Maybe that was the problem. I’d spent all my time trying to be prepared for him to come to us instead of aiming to take him down before he even had a chance.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go back and get on with the planning.”
Wylder and the others were in the middle of a conversation when we climbed into the van. “We’re going to have to deal with the cop problem before we can focus on getting the Bend back,” Wylder said, and nodded to me. “We can’t fight a war with them breathing down our necks.”
“How are we going to do that?” Kaige asked.
“We could lay low for a few days and let them make the next move,” Rowan said. “See what they’re planning next.”
“No,” I said. Every eye turned to me. I drew myself up into as firm a posture as I could manage. “I’m tired of waiting around for them to make their moves. They’re too unpredictable for us to learn much like that anyway—and they’re getting too close to making major damage. We need to squash Xavier and everyone who stands with him as quickly as we can.”
Mercy cocked her head. “What exactly are you suggesting, Gideon?”
“We take the fight to them,” I said. “If the Storm is going to set us up, we can just as easily do the same damn thing to them.”