Concrete Savior Read Free

reading. “You sit there and you just . . . act like everything’s normal . Another day in the life of Eran Redmond.”
He gazed at her for a moment, then pushed back and folded his arms. “Well, it is, isn’t it? Another day in my life? And yours, too, at least the way you— we —have made it.”
“No,” she said. “I mean yes . I—hell, I don’t know what I mean. I just can’t believe that you sit there and accept that I just fell out of nowhere and turned your entire existence upside down. I mean, what kind of person does that?” He opened his mouth but Brynna cut him off. “Wait, don’t answer that. I know you’re going to say something I don’t want to hear.”
“You mean about lo—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” she repeated.
“Fine,” he said, but the placid tone of his voice softened what could have been curtness. “What would you prefer? A reality check? Would that make you feel better?”
Brynna frowned at him, not sure where this was headed. “It might. At least then I could be sure you’re not just in some kind of psychological denial phase.”
“All right. Then let’s take it from the top. I’ll list all the salient points and when I’m finished, you can tell me if I’ve missed anything.”
“Salient points?”
“My turn to talk, not yours.” He held up one finger, then tapped it with another, repeating the process every time he finished with a sentence.
“You’re really a demon—a fallen angel—who ran away from Hell.”
tap
“You’re here in human form because you want to be forgiven so you can go back to being an angel again.”
tap
“As it stands right now, you believe that the way to do this is to protect nephilim—half-human, half-angel beings—from being killed by other demons before they can perform whatever task they were born to do.”
tap
“We just went through essentially round one of you doing just that.” For the first time since Eran had started, he paused as a shadow slid across his features. “And we found out that sometimes things don’t work out the way we want.” He took a deep breath, then kept going.
tap
“And you have these things called Hunters after you that want to bring you back to Hell.” He raised an eyebrow, giving Brynna a flash of the sarcastic s.o.b. shew he could be. “If that last one was still around, we could thank it for my new kitchen.”
tap
She shifted, getting impatient with Eran’s checklist litany and that infuriating tapping sound. In response, he held up a hand to stop her from speaking. “I didn’t believe you at first but now I’ve seen enough proof to believe all of the above. And—”
tap
“I’m in love with you.”
tap
She sat there, for once truly speechless. He’d tried to say this before, yeah, but she’d always seen it coming and been able to stop him. There was something about hearing it out loud that made it . . . irreversible. It was like breaking an egg. You could look at the mess, but no matter how badly you wanted to, you couldn’t un break it. “No,” was all she could finally manage.
“Yes.”
“Stop it,” she said. It came out sounding sharper than she really felt. She swatted again at the hair across her forehead. “You can’t do that. I’m not human .”
He shrugged. “Human enough. At least this version of you is.” The corners of his eyes crinkled suddenly. “Even your hair is getting longer.”
“This isn’t funny, Eran!”
He reached across the table and grabbed her hand before she could pull away. “What do you want me to say, Brynna? You want me to lie? I won’t.”
Just this small touch was making heat build between them already and she pulled her hand free before the contact could get them both in trouble. Her resistance had given way only one time, almost two months ago, but if she let herself think about it, the memory of that single night could bring about an abrupt, nearly ferocious hunger inside her to repeat it, to fel his lips against hers—
Stop