kanej lines i lose my mind over daily
He needed to tell her…what? That she was lovely and brave and better than anything he deserved. That he was twisted, crooked, wrong, but not so broken that he couldn’t pull himself together into some semblance of a man for her. That without meaning to, he’d begun to lean on her, to look for her, to need her near. He needed to thank her for his new hat.
One minute he made her blush and the next he made her want to commit murder.
She smiled then, her cheeks red, her cheeks scattered with some kind of dust. It was a smile he thought he might die to earn again.
“You know I can do it, Kaz, and you know I’m not going to refuse. So why ask?” Because I’ve been looking for an excuse to talk to you for two days.
“Why the net, Kaz?” Yes, why the net? Why something that could complicate the assault he’d planned on the silos and leave them twice as open to exposure? I couldn’t bear to watch you fall.
What do you want, then? The old answers came easily to mind. Money. Vengeance. Jordie’s voice in my head silenced forever. But a different reply roared to life inside him, loud, insistent, and unwelcome. You, Inej. You.
Tell her to get out, a voice inside him demanded. Beg her to stay.
Speak, she begged silently. Give me a reason to stay. For all his selfishness and cruelty, Kaz was still the boy who had saved her. She wanted to believe he was worth saving, too.
He took a breath. “I want you to stay. I want you to … I want you.”
The truth was she’d tried to sneak up on Kaz plenty of times since then. She’d never managed it. It was as if once Kaz had seen her, he’d understood how to keep seeing her.
“I can hear the change in Kaz’s breathing when he looks at you.“ "You… you can?” “It catches every time, like he’s never seen you before.”
His gaze found hers. He’d known she was there all along. Of course he had. He always knew how to find her.
Nina glanced from Inej to Kaz and saw they both wore the same expression. Nina knew that look. It came after the shipwreck, when the tide moved against you and the sky had gone dark. It was the first sight of land, the hope of shelter and even salvation that might await you on a distant shore.
“I would come for you,” he said, and when he saw the wary look she shot him, he said it again. “I would come for you. And if I couldn’t walk, I’d crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we’d fight our way out together—knives drawn, pistol blazing. Because that’s what we do. We never stop fighting.”
It hurt to stand here like this, so close to the circle of her arms. It isn’t easy for me either. After all she’d endured, he was the weak one. But she would never know what it was like for him to see Nina pull her close, watch Jesper loop his arm through hers, what it was to stand in doorways and against walls and know he could never draw nearer. But I’m here now, he thought wildly.
“I’m not ready to give up on this city, Kaz. I think it’s worth saving.” I think you’re worth saving.
She’d laughed and if he could have bottled the sound and got drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him.
“Wait,” he said. The burn of his voice was rougher than usual. “Is my tie straight?”
Inej laughed, her hood falling back from her hair.
“That’s the laugh,” he murmured, but she was already setting off down the quay, her feet barely touching the ground.
She felt his knuckles slide against hers. Then his hand was in her hand, his palm was pressed against her own. A tremor moved through him. Slowly, he let their fingers entwine. For a long while, they stood there, hands clasped, looking out at the gray expanse of the sea.
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
