Page 88 of The Last Call Home
Not claimed.
Not owned.
Chosen.
Desired.
Worshipped.
My body’s still trembling.My heart’s still climbing its way down from the stars.
Even now, as aftershocks ripple through me, I know one thing with devastating clarity.
I’m his—I’m theirs.
ChapterThirty-Five
Malerick
The Last Lightbar smells like cedar wood and spilled bourbon.
I close the door behind me, the soft click swallowed by low music and the scrape of a chair dragging across old hardwood.Cassian’s not behind the bar—which throws me.He’s always there.Always watching.Always calculating.Unless he has the night off.That’s when he’s upstairs.Monitoring something in the town, working remotely for CQS, or somewhere with Atlas.
He thinks I don’t know, but I’ve noticed him heading to the gym when Atlas is also off to the gym, the shooting range or a warehouse that they treat like a war room.Practicing combat like they’re prepping for a final act no one else knows about.
War is coming and I’m not sure if it’ll be the Syndicate or Blythe’s husband who gets here first.Maybe it’s be a tie.
Atlas and I—we’ve already gone a few rounds.We’ve aired out the shit that clung between us.He knows I never hated him.But getting close again?That’s going to take time.Time and effort and more fucking patience than I’m known to have.At least now he trusts me enough to protect her.His wife.Or is it partner?
I still don’t know what the hell they are to each other.That bond—it’s complicated.Maybe she’s just a temporary shadow he’s hiding from the monster she married.Perhaps she’ll vanish when that threat finally burns out.But I doubt it.He looks at her like he’s already chosen her.Like his every instinct is dialed into her.
I’ve seen that look before.
Ledger has it when he watches Galeana as if she holds the only truth he believes in.
Hops goes soft and wild around Nysa, like she’s the only person who knows how to calm the storm inside him.
And Keir ...Keir had it with Simone.That boy looked at her like the fucking sun came up for her alone.Until he had to leave this town.Last time I saw Simone, she told me never to mention his name again.
Guess that didn’t have a happy ending.
I move deeper into the bar, passing a couple tangled in a booth, a man passed out near the jukebox, and the bartender—who isn’t Cassian—counting tips with one eye on the door.The place is slowing down.Almost closing time.Two in the morning, and it shows.
I make my way to the stool closest to the wall.My unofficial spot.
I don’t come here often.Cass swears I scare the patrons when the sheriff—me—sets foot in this place.Apparently, my presence is bad for business.So, I wait.I show up late.When the beer’s flat, the lights are low, and the only customers left are too drunk to care who I am or what I could do if they do something stupid.
It’s the perfect time to clear the place out.
I slide onto the stool, my back to the wall, my gaze sweeping over the shelves behind the bar.There it is.A bottle of Macallan.Cassian knows it’s the one I like.When I show up, he just pours.
And like clockwork, he walks in from the back.No surprise in his expression.No raised brows.Just those eyes that see through everything cutting straight to the bones we try to bury.
“You look like shit.Rough day?”he says, already reaching for the bottle and two glasses.
I rub a hand down my face, skin hot from the day’s fire I can’t put out.“What do you think the sheriff does?Origami?Cooking classes?”
He snorts—deep, amused, and faintly judgmental.Like I should know better than to answer questions with sass.
