Killer Instinct (The Naturals, #2)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Dean smiled. Not a half smile. Not a grin. He beamed, and the expression transformed him. Chocolate-brown eyes sparkled underneath the blond hair that hung perpetually in his face. A dimple I’d never seen appeared in one cheek.

Most people built walls to protect themselves. Dean did it to protect everyone else.

“If you were like Cassie and me”—Dean stared Michael down—“you wouldn’t have to ask.” Dead silence. Dean had never admitted that the two of us were the same before. He’d never believed it. He’d certainly never said it to Michael.

“Stay,” he told me. Dean wants me here.

I didn’t care about the difference between active cases and cold cases. I cared about Dean.

“You’re drawn to darkness.” “No,” I said. “I’m drawn to Dean, and I do care, because I care about him.

“I was wrong,” he said, “when I said I just felt something.” He was breathing heavily. I couldn’t breathe at all. “When I said I wasn’t sure it was enough.”

Michael gave me a careless smile. “You win some, you lose some,” he said with a shrug. Like I’d never been anything more than a game. Like I didn’t matter. Because he wouldn’t let me matter anymore.

The bruises and scrapes, the pounding in my head—it all faded away under Michael’s casual cruelty, his utter indifference.

Michael stared at me, his hazel eyes holding a mixture of emotions I couldn’t quite parse. “If it had been me in the woods, if I’d been the one to go with Briggs, if I’d been the one you saw at the exact second…” Would it have been me? He didn’t finish the question, and I didn’t answer it. As I turned back toward the house, he went back to knocking the windows out of that broken, battered car. “Yeah,” he said, his voice carrying on the wind. “That’s what I thought.”

im team dean but holy shit this hurts

“When the odds are bad,” she said, removing something from one of them, “you change the rules.”