I knew he could see the faint shimmer of moisture on my cheeks. Eagle Eyes once saw a drop of moisture on an ice sculpture I hadn’t been able to see. I gave him a look and a shrug, like, What? You wanted me to cry and let it out. Just doing what you told me. Are you ever happy with a damn thing I do? Then I flipped him off. Shit. I plunged the defiant hand into my pocket. That wasn’t me. That was someone I used to be. What the hell was happening to my center?

But I knew the answer to that. First Shazam. Now Dancer. Did the universe harbor a secret grudge against me? Was it not going to be happy until it had stolen everyone I cared about?

“I wasn’t flipping you off,” I told Dancer as he approached.

But when Dancer glanced back to see who’d pissed me off, Ryodan was gone.

“Caoimhe told you, didn’t she?” Dancer said a short time later as he handed me a heaping bowl of mixed fruit topped with whipped cream. “She promised me she would never talk to you about it. I told her you knew but hated discussing it.”

I nodded. I’d eliminated all trace of tears by the time Dancer had reached me, and if he’d noticed my eyes were red, he chose not to comment. I didn’t understand the point of crying. All you got from it was a stuffed up nose and a short-lived headache, and I was always dangerously hungry afterward. It didn’t solve a thing. It didn’t change a thing. It only made you feel worse.

“How much did she tell you?” he asked, motioning me to follow him into the living room.

“You never brought me here before,” I dodged, wondering what he meant by “how much.” Hadn’t she told me the worst? I terminated that thought and resumed studying his digs. “Here” was the top floor of an old firehouse that overlooked the River Liffey and had been converted into a huge one-room loft, partitioned with furniture placement into kitchen, living room, and bedroom. Thick cream sheepskin rugs covered well-worn hardwood floors. The furnishings were simple, modern, comfortable. The entire wall facing the river was window from floor to ceiling. I stared out, watching the silvery slide of the water, wishing I could slide off on it.

“This is where I live most of the time. I kept a lot of other places because I never knew what part of town you might be hanging out in.”

“You lived two completely separate lives. One with me and one without.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you had…you know?”

“A bad heart? You’d have disappeared and I’d never have seen you again. There was no room in your world for anything less than a superhero. I’m not sure there is now either.”

I said fiercely, “I’m here, aren’t I?” And I didn’t want to be. I wanted to be anywhere else, doing something with purpose that made me feel good, not staring into Death’s impersonal jaws as they tried to close on one of the few people I wanted to see often, and couldn’t wait to see each time so we could blurt out everything we thought to each other. At fourteen there’d never been a sense of urgency. We’d been kids. We were going to live forever. He was always going to be somewhere around the next corner.

Not.

“Yes, but to what degree and with what new conditions that must be met?” he countered. “I knew the second you didn’t want me on the Ducati that you’d found out. Then you slow-mo-Joe walked down the street. You never do that. Is that how we’re going to be now? Dancer’s so fragile that Dancer doesn’t get to do anything not Mega-approved, and that might not even include something so strenuous as swatting a fly?”

Sounded bloody good to me. I spooned up fruit and swallowed but it got stuck on a lump in my throat. I coughed and spat it back out into the bowl. He was beside me in an instant, ready to give me the Heimlich, as he had so many times in the past when I’d wolfed my food too fast to swallow. “I’d let you swat a fly,” I said crossly.

He smiled faintly. “Yeah, but would you let me swat a bee?”

“Probably.”

“How about set off a bomb and outrun it?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely not.”

“Then I guess we can’t be friends anymore. Because I will set off bombs and outrun them. And I will get to climb on that big beautiful bike of yours and wrap my arms around you and lean into all that gorgeous hair and smell you, and hear you laugh and see your eyes flash fire. Or I may as well just kick it right now because you, Dani Mega O’Malley, make me feel alive like nothing else does. And I don’t want to miss a moment of it.”

I forgot how to breathe. Wrap his arms around me, he’d said. He thought I had gorgeous hair and my eyes flashed fire. I deflected instantly, “Smell me? I always smell bad. Like blood and guts and sweat.”

“You smell fearless. And you smell good a lot. Like fall leaves, hot apple cider spiked with dark rum, and a fire topped with twigs of sassafras. You smell like life and the kind of days I want to enjoy while I’m here. Do you have any idea how I felt when you came back older? I was so pissed that you’d gone off and lived so much life without me getting to be there for any of it, but then I thought the angels must have heard my prayers to let me live long enough to kiss you. Not a fourteen-year-old kiss. A nineteen-year-old kiss. A really hot, sexy nineteen-year-old kiss.” He grinned. “Assuming you don’t have a problem with younger men. Do you have a problem with younger men, Mega?”

I ignored the part about kissing. That was too much for my ears to hear right now. He was trying to not only insist that I face his heart issue, but kissing, too? That was total bullshit. “You’ve got to be shitting me,” I said coolly. “You not only want us to stay friends, you want me to care about you even more? Are you batshit crazy? Or do you think I am?”

“Yes, no, and no,” he said evenly. “Or will you only care about someone you know will live forever?”

“Like that even exists,” I evaded.

“I happen to know it does. I watched two of Ryodan’s men die. They showed up fine a week later. I’m not stupid, Mega.”

I barely managed to conceal a wince. Bloody hell, if Ryodan knew Dancer knew that, I wouldn’t have to worry about his heart killing him. Ryodan would.

He reached for my hand but I snatched it away, then tried to soften the insult by using it to tighten my ponytail.

Ire flashed in his eyes but faded quickly. He gave a snort of soft, wry laughter. “Mom had the same reaction when she found out. Pretty much everyone in my life did. It was years before people stopped acting weird around me.”