Page 78 of Librarian

“He threw me off the wall last time I tried to apologise.”

“Expressing emotions is healthy, and you lived.”

Leo staggers through the door after me, muttering, “Barely.”

“You used their relationship against her.”

His shoulders drop. “Yeah. I was a prat.” He rubs his eyes, tripping over his own feet as we trudge up the stairs. “I… I was terrified, and she saw it and called me out on my shite. So, instead of stopping, I went out of my way to beworse.”

We reach our landing, but I pause on the top step, stopping him with a hand on his arm. “Is that why you went to Mathias?”

Leo huffs out a breath. “Maybe subconsciously. But I’m not going to lie and pretend I saw it that way at the time.”

I release him. I can work with that kind of honesty. “If you manage to get Dakari to tolerate you, prove to everyone that you’ve pulled your head out of your ass, and she still doesn’t want to have anything to do with you, then you have to let her go.”

He slumps against his door, glancing longingly down the hallway to Kyrith’s room. “Why are you helping me?”

“What do you mean?”

“I was an absolute arse to you. Why would you help me get her back?”

I snort. “I’m still upset, don’t get me wrong, but I’m helping you because you’re my brother, and I believe you genuinely want to make up for what you did. But I’m not helping you win Kyrith back. You can’t.” His eyes slide closed, and I sigh. “What youcando is put your life back together so thatifour girl decides to fall in love with the new you, then you’re worthy of her. If she doesn’t, then you’ve got the support you need to move on and not repeat those mistakes with the next girl.”

Leo shakes his head, twisting the door handle. “There is no next girl. She’s it for me.”

I want to contradict him, but unfortunately, I understand him all too well.

Kyrith is it for me, too.

Twenty-Two

Kyrith

“Good afternoon, sleeping beauty.”

Jasper’s rich burr, normally so welcome, is a grating assault on my eardrums. I bury myself in the covers to try to escape it. On my belly, Westley stirs, his warm weight shifting as he too protests the interruption.

The bed dips. “Come on, lass. There’s a fry up with your name on it, but if you eat it on Pierce’s fancy sheets, he’ll kill us both. He’s probably already having kittens over the cat hair.”

Pierce’s sheets? They are rather soft.

Magic, my head hurts. Opening my eyes seems like a bad idea. So why is Jasper turning down the covers?

“Leave me alone,” I grouch as Westley gives up on sleep and prowls over to the evil angel grinning down at me, demanding attention.

Jasper tsks under his breath, rubbing around the cat’s folded ears until he earns a steady, thrumming purr. “I sweet-talked Ma into making tattie scones for you.”

“Leave them on the table.”

“And miss your face when you see your new pyjamas?”

Pyjamas? I frown, then huff out a breath and wrestle myself free of the covers.

If someone has meddled with my clothes, I’d rather know before Lambert has a chance to take a photograph.

It takes my dry, crusty eyes a second to focus on the white fabric, and a heartbeat longer for me to brush aside the neat plait I don’t remember braiding and read the writing covering my chest.

“He did not.”