Page 74 of The Vagabond

“You scare me,” I whisper.

“Good,” he murmurs, pulling me closer. “Because sometimes I scare myself too.”

I hate how safe I feel with him. I hate how much I don’t want him to leave.

“You know this can’t happen again,” I murmur.

His fingers pause. “Too late.”

“I’m the wrong kind of girl for you, Saxon.”

He exhales. “And maybe I’m tired of being the right kind of guy.”

My throat tightens.

“This doesn’t change anything,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “But it sure as hell means something.”

His voice is low, almost hoarse, as he gets up and starts to move around my room in the half-light of morning. I watch from the bed, sheets tangled around my legs, as he dresses with practiced efficiency—pulling his shirt over tired muscles, the fabric stretching across broad shoulders still damp from sleep.

“They’re going to try to get to you,” Saxon says. “I don’t wantyou anywhere near this investigation, Maxine,” he continues. “These are dangerous people we’re dealing with.”

His words strike like a slap, but my spine straightens beneath the weight of them.

“They need to be stopped,” I whisper, a defiant thread laced through my voice like steel beneath silk.

“They will be,” he replies without missing a beat. “But not with your involvement.”

He runs a hand through his hair—tousled, still golden from the bedside lamp—and for a moment, he looks like he wants to say more. Instead, he tosses his words at me like a grenade.

“I sort of wish you’d move back in with Brando and Mia.”

I gawk at him, the sheer audacity of it knotting in my throat.

“Are you insane?” I breathe.

He sighs, long and slow, and begins doing up the buttons on his shirt, one by one with military precision. But his eyes? They haven’t left me once. Not even as his hands work through the motion.

“You were safer when you were there,” he says. “The real world isn’t actually such a pretty place for someone like you, Max.”

The words sting more than I want to admit.

“I can take care of myself,” I bite back.

His jaw tightens.

“Like you did in that alley?”

Silence. The moment shatters. He realizes it instantly—can see the hurt bloom across my face like blood under skin. The regret hits him hard and fast, flashing across his features before he even has time to school it. He swears under his breath and drops one knee on the bed, looming over me like the weight of what he’s said is crushing him from the inside.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he murmurs, voice low and wrecked. “Max?—”

“Then howdidyou mean it?”

He doesn’t answer. Just stares at me, expression raw, eyes pleading. The same eyes that undressed me hours ago. That held me through the night. That promised more than either of us could ever say aloud.

“Do you have any idea what would happen to me if anything ever happened to you, Maxine?”

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