Harbor City learned our names together.
Mine first, because it had always known the Prescotts.
His second, because once Evan York stood beside me often enough, people began asking who he was.
Then they stopped asking and started warning each other instead.
Don’t provoke Miss Prescott.
And definitely don’t provoke the man beside her.
That suited me perfectly.
One evening at a private dinner, some idiot with old money and no judgment smiled too long at me across the table and asked whether I ever got tired of keeping such dangerous company.
I smiled back and said, “Only when he’s bored.”
The room went quiet.
Evan, seated to my left, didn’t even look up from the wine he was pouring for me.
The idiot paled anyway.
Afterward, in the car, Evan asked, “Was that a compliment?”
“That depends,” I said.
“On what?”
“On whether you plan to stay dangerous.”
He turned his head and looked at me in the darkened back seat.
“For everyone else,” he said. “Yes.”
I touched his jaw. “Good.”
He kissed my fingers.
Sometimes I thought about the words the floating comments had used the first night.
Villainess.
Final boss.
Mad dog.
Heroine.
As if people could be sorted so neatly.
Julia, for example, was still sweet enough to make strangers lower their guard in seconds, and ruthless enough to dismantle a bloodline brick by brick with a smile on her face. Evan still knew how to look up through his lashes like a wounded boy, and could order a man’s death ten minutes later without changing expression. I could pet a hurt animal with one hand and ruin someone’s future with the other.
Which of us was supposed to be good?
Which one was evil?
The categories felt childish now.
Life was simpler than morality and more complicated than stories.
There were people who mattered.
And there were people who didn’t.
Everything else was decoration.
One rainy afternoon, when the city was gray and quiet, I found Evan in the study going over Black Harbor accounts with a focus severe enough to make him look older than he was.
I slipped into his lap anyway.
He didn’t even flinch.
He just moved one arm automatically around my waist and kept reading.
“You’ve become very calm,” I observed.
“I learned from you.”
“Liar.”
He looked up at last. “Would you like me to be less calm?”
I considered him.
Then I closed the ledger on his desk and said, “Yes.”
That was the end of work for the afternoon.
Later, while I was half-asleep against his shoulder, I asked, “If I had never picked you up that night, what would you have done?”
He was quiet for so long I thought he might not answer.
Then he said, “I would have gone back.”
“To your father?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“I would have finished it.”
The way he said it made my chest tighten.
“And after that?”
He looked out at the rain for a moment. “I don’t know. Run. Hide. Work. Fight. Keep my sister alive somehow.” He paused. “Become something ugly.”
I lifted my head. “You already are something ugly.”
That made him laugh.
A real laugh. Low and brief.
Then he kissed my forehead and said, “Yes. But now I’m yours.”
That should not have made me as happy as it did.
It did anyway.