Page 22 of Waiting Game

I pulled out my phone and started looking for flights home as I continued to drink alone.

A tall figure arrived next to me, leaning cooly against the bar and watching me with a smirk on his face.

“And so the Saint returns,” he drawled.

I knew exactly who it was, and I didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking up at him. I continued scrolling through my phone and hoping that he would leave me alone.

“You okay?” Ren asked.

“No,” I spat, still looking down at my screen.

He chuckled, and I didn’t realise how much I had missed the sound.

“Dance with me,” he said, his voice gruff and demanding.

“Again, no,” I said, making the mistake of looking up at him.

His hair was combed back neatly, and he had taken his suit jacket off and was just wearing his white, tight-fitting undershirt with the sleeves rolled up unevenly by his elbows.

He was still annoyingly beautiful.

Though his face had sharpened with time, his eyes still carried a boyishness in the dark green that I knew was full of much darker things.

He elbowed me in the ribs, “dance with me, Val.”

I rolled my eyes and sighed, finishing my fourth - fifth? - drink.

I let him sweep me onto the dance floor, wrapping his arms around me tightly. We swayed along to the music, our tempo much slower than that of the beat. He was smiling down at me, with something extra in his expression.

“What?” I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Nothing,” he shrugged, “I thought that I’d never see you again.”

“Well,” I looked away, “now you have.”

He chuckled, and I studied his face.

His jaw was dark with the threat of stubble, and his eyes bore into mine as if not a single moment had passed since our time together. The last time that I had seen Ren, was the day before my eighteenth birthday. I had distanced myself from him as much as possible once he and Antoni started the initiation process - but it was hard to stay away from him.

It was a mental battle that I had to do to separate the him that he was, from the him that I knew he would eventually turn into. Once Dad died, I knew that the Ren I loved so deeply as a foolish teenage girl was as good as dead.

He and Antoni would transform from lowly soldiers within The Family, doing small jobs as they proved their worth and loyalty, to cold-blooded killers.

To the evil monsters that I was so scared of, yet surrounded by, when I was a kid.

But looking at him now, it was hard to imagine.

It was hard to separate.

“I’ve missed you, Val,” he said softly, and I barely heard him over the music.

He tugged me in closer against his body, and I pulled back.

“Look, I’m engaged now, Lorenzo.” I snapped.

He laughed once, a darkness shading his eyes.

“I could fix that. Easily,” he mumbled.

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