Page 23 of Dagger

Something flickered in her expression. Just for a second. A hesitation. A breath she didn’t take. Then she blinked, her shoulders squaring like she was slamming a door shut. “There’s so much you don’t understand. I wish?—”

His restraint snapped.

“You wish?” His voice was raw, something dangerously close to broken. “You wish, Quinn?” His throat tightened, his voice gruff. “You want to know what I wish?” He leaned forward and her eyes widened, caught in the intensity of his stare. “I wish that you would understand that I could never abandon my nephews," he ground out. "They are all I have left of Brian. How could you even think I would agree to that?"

She inhaled sharply, but he wasn’t done.

“I wish you’d pull your goddamn head out of your ass and see how much I care about you. I wish you knew what it’s like, watching you fight alone, watching you rip yourself apart, knowing I can’t do a goddamn thing to stop it.” He had the overwhelming urge to touch her as if his skin could penetrate hers and she would finally get it. “You think I wanted this? To see you drowning, knowing I can’t be the one to pull you out? I would have moved heaven and earth to save Brian. We all wouldhave died for him. But you…you keep punishing me like losing him wasn’t enough.”

His fists clenched at his sides, his breathing sharp, clipped. Every single patron in the bar was watching now. The weight of their gazes pressed down, murmurs spreading through the crowd.

His assessment had been wrong, a gnawing part of him now knew the truth. She wasn’t something to be fixed. He could fight a thousand battles, tear down every goddamn wall, but at the end of the day, she had to be the architect of her own transformation.

Because if she didn’t change, if she kept pushing him away, if she truly meant what she’d said?—

He would lose.

Kade "Dagger" Hollis didn’t fucking lose.

His pulse slowed. His mind sharpened. The chaos inside him silenced, focused.

Quinn was the enemy in his scope, and a marksman never missed.

“So, fuck you, Quinn. Bring it on. I am always ready for war.”

6

Quinn’s legsfelt like dead weight as she moved away from him, the restaurant buzzing around her, the sounds of conversation and clinking glassware blurring into an indistinct hum. No one could really hear what they were saying since they were away from the crowd and the noise was loud. But they saw the encounter and knew it was intense. Even as her stomach heaved, shame washed over her in unrelenting waves. She’d thought she’d made amends, but she wasn’t even close, and her vindictive attitude in her office only made that shame burn hotter.

What had she said to him about kicking him out of her life? How cruel. How unthinking. How devastating. Worse, how blind. Because it wasn’t just him she had been cutting out. It was them, her boys, their boys. A part of him lived in them, in their laughter, their stubborn streaks, the way Elijah clenched his jaw when frustrated, the way Ezra studied the world with quiet intensity. She had spent years convincing herself that they were Brian’s. But weren’t they his, too?

Nausea rolled through her stomach. The air felt too thick, the walls of the space too tight, like they were closing in, trappingher inside the ruin of everything she’d just done, and she couldn’t breathe.

He had never broken like that before.

Not even at Brian’s funeral. She swallowed. She had been numb then, in shock, and she had leaned on him, never once thinking he needed someone to lean on.

Kade…God, what had she done?

She’d never considered his pain…no, his agony in removing her kids from her neglect and spiraling bitterness.

Still, he checked up on her. Encouraged her. Tried to be there for her just as Easy had said. Every. Single. Time.

She shied away from the implications of what that meant because just dealing with Dagger’s excruciating torment was all that her mind could handle. She was going to handle it because he mattered. She saw that now.

Yet, tonight, she pushed him past his breaking point in front of everyone. Easy again…he had it right.Unfair, that word was such an understatement. She had meant to be sharp, meant to be cutting, meant to make him hurt the way she hurt. But she hadn’t expected to see it. Hadn’t expected to see the raw, gaping wound beneath his control. More guilt flooded in. Had she pushed him so that he would lose control? Had she wanted to see him as raw as she was? God help her. She was such a fucking bitch.

She realized, far too late, that she wasn’t just throwing daggers at a hardened SEAL. She was throwing them at a man who had been standing in the wreckage with her the entire time. Quinn sank into her seat, but the ache in her chest didn’t ease.

She had to live with how she had acted. Her breath was ragged by the time she reached the table, but neither Piper nor David seemed to notice. They were staring at her, waiting, expectant.

Piper’s lips parted first. “Whowasthat gorgeous man?”

The question hit wrong, rubbing against the raw, exposed nerve endings of Quinn’s frayed emotions.Gorgeous?God, yes.

Dagger had always been undeniably beautiful in a way that made her stomach twist, even back then, even when she shouldn’t have noticed. When she shouldn’t have let her mind linger. In her weakest moments, she had acknowledged it. The cut of his jaw, the way his green eyes sharpened like a blade, the muscles in his arms flexing beneath his tan skin, dusted with sweat after a run. A presence too large to ignore. But she couldn’t embrace it. Couldn’t embrace him. Because he wasn’t hers. She was pledged to his brother. The love of her life.

Yet—

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