Apprentice to the Villain (Assistant to the Villain, #2)

by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

My gods, the woman was like the sun. He needed tinted glasses just to look at her.

How she’d yell at him, and then the flush would go all the way down her chest, dipping below her bodice, at which time, naturally, he’d be distracted by it and stop listening. She’d notice and yell at him some more. He couldn’t wait.

“It is fiction for a reason, you menace. By the gods, what if you carried out every impossible act you read about?” It was a rhetorical question, but she couldn’t resist the urge to slip into the normal ease of their cadence, like no time had passed. “Oh, I suppose that I would need to become very, um—flexible.”

He would follow her off a cliff without question. And Evie knew she was in love with him. Right then, right there.

There was no emotion in his voice when he said, “Does your mind live in the gutter?” She shook her head, tapping a finger against her lips. “No, but it rents there on occasion.”

“Sometimes family isn’t a thing we are born into but a choice we make. Sometimes”—Evie smiled—“the people who love you most in your life are the ones who choose you.”

Losing someone didn’t mean the end; it merely meant the beginning of the life you’d lead without them, the beginning of letting in the people you’d gain in their stead.

Sage, that was irresponsible. Sage, that was unprofessional. Sage, if you kiss me again, you’ll kill me.