I couldn’t understand why she identified herself as the shell of the girl I’d seen her as a few times. That wasn’t a person—that was a corpse warmed over.

“So you see yourself one way and I see you in exactly the opposite way. Which girl do you want to be?”

Another song pumped through the speakers, making those predeceasing it seem tame. “It’s not that easy,” she replied. “It’s not who we want to be, but who we are that defines us.”

That sounded profoundly wise. Too bad it wasn’t true. “That’s positively the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard.”

“What did I tell you?” she said, lifting her mouth to my ear to cut through the bass shock waving around the room. “I’m a pessimist.”

Curling my neck into her, I repeated, “Who do you want to be?” I wasn’t going to let her distract me from this, not when we were making progress.

When her hands slid from my shoulders to the curve of my neck, her fingers weaving through my hair, I would have let her distract me from saving the world. “I want to be the person you think I am.”

We weren’t moving against each other anymore, but our bodies locked together immobile just as well as they had in motion. “Good news for you then. That’s who you are,” I said. “The rest is just staying on that path.”

Her laugh muffled into my neck. “Sounds easy.”

“It is if you just stick with me, never leave my side, move in with me—”

“That,” she interrupted, “sounds anything but easy.”

“By your own admission, you said that the person you are when you’re around me is the person you want to be,” I said. “Lucky for you I like you and don’t mind you hanging around twenty-four seven striving to be all you can be.”

“How generous of you.”

There’s a sliver of silence while the stereo system took a breather before the next song—and I use the word song loosely—pounded through the room. It’s enough to put a crack in the spell Emma cast on me whenever she’s around. I remembered why I’m here. And it’s not to dance and flirt back and forth with her, although that took a close second. I was here to get her out of this place.

“What are you doing here, Em?” I asked, never an advocate of segues.

“Dancing with you,” she said, a smile in her voice.

Damn if she didn’t have me there. “Let me specify. What are you doing holing up in this bottom feeder of a house? Why have you been afraid of so much as making eye contact with me?” Instead of punching something in frustration, I drew her closer, until she stilled the raging waters within. “What are you doing?”

This, perhaps more than any of the others, was the question. The question I had no answer for. The question she had every answer for. The question that would open or slam closed the crack in the future of us.

I felt her chest rise before she answered, “It’s complicated.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That be-all-end-all answer you girls like to use holds no sway over me.” Clenching her shoulders, I looked down at her. “Spill it, Em. All of it.”

She held my gaze for a moment or two before her lids fell like heavy curtains. The tri-wrinkle between her brows smoothed right before the rest of her face did and, when her eyes reopened, I knew she was ready.

She was just opening her mouth when I spoke up. “Hold up. I know that face,” I said, waving my hand at her. “That’s an I’m-ready-to-give-you-the-key-to-the-safe-of-deep-secrets face. That’s a serious face.” One side of her mouth curved up in amusement. “Let’s get out of here. I prefer sordid confessions and spilling of guts over a bucket of ice cream.” I was already tugging her towards the door I’d entered hell to save an angel.

“Sordid?” she said, giving me a look.

“You’re not the only one who has some dishing to do tonight,” I said, putting on a blasé front. “My confessions may or may not be of a sordid nature. I’ll let you decide.”

“Would it make any difference if I put up a fight?” she asked, not putting up any of a fight as I carved a line for us through the dance floor.

“Of course not,” I said. “I’d just throw you over my shoulder and kidnap you if I had to.” When I glanced back over my shoulder at her, her eyes were the first thing I noticed. They were no longer glinting with happiness.

A cocktail of surprise and fear floundered in them. I knew why, I knew I’d more than pressed my luck staying as long as I had, pressed up against another man’s women on the dance floor, so I was expecting what came next.

Spinning around, I backed into Emma, knowing I couldn’t keep her safe from flying limbs, bottles, and whatever else got thrown into the mix if I wasn’t melded into her until it was hard to distinguish whose body was whose.

The first strike came in the form of an outstretched arm coming from my ten o’clock, sweeping the kipped hat clean off my head.

I pivoted a quarter turn, furious at the cheap shot. Not because I’d been made a fool of in front of northern California’s future burger flippers, but because spit-wad’s arm had come within a hair of smacking Emma across the face. His arm wouldn’t still be attached to his shoulder had that been the case.

“I don’t believe you were on the invite list,” hat sweeper hollered at me over the music, his oiled biceps, only to be outdone by his oiled hair, making me wonder if he was more the thing of bad reality television than real Ivy League college life.

“I didn’t realize you needed an invitation to hell,” I answered, every muscle, every fiber of my existence, zapping to life. “I thought you just kind of got sucked in with the rest of the riff-raff.”

“Metro has a smart mouth. Isn’t that precious?” oily boy shouted into the crowd. The promises of a fight had caught the attention of everyone within a two room radius; the hellacious music had even dimmed to almost-permanently-ruin-your-ear-drums volume.

“Would you guys stop calling me a metro already?” I replied, rolling my eyes. “Because I can promise you no metro can hit like this.”

And to further clarify, I demonstrated on the wannabe reality-tv star.

In all honesty, it wasn’t that hard of a hit. Just a soft right hook to the jaw that sent him spiraling backwards into the drywall. After witnessing the pucker in the drywall his head created before he slid to the ground, where he’d be sleeping it off the rest of tonight and tomorrow, I knew I had to recalibrate my “soft” when it came to whacking entitled, tough guy posers in the future.

The crowd took a collective giant step back as a dozen more carbon copies with varying degrees of oiliness stepped forward. What I hadn’t wanted was a frat boy war on my hands when I’d entered the door, but now that they were in front of me, eager and willing, it felt like just the thing I needed to burn off a little steam.

“Hey, Rapunzel,” carbon copy at my six o’clock called out, tilting his chin at me. “So you can land a hit on a rip-roaring drunk guy, good for you. What are you going to do when all of us come at you with an ass-whooping? Flick us with your golden hair?” He grinned into the crowd as he stretched his Thanksgiving day turkey sized arms over his chest. The guy preceded a fight by prepping and stretching his muscles. What—as the English would say—a wanker.

“Why don’t you put some action behind those words?” I said, keeping one arm trained on Emma, the other slack at my side, but ready.

“Hey, Emma,” idle threat boy called out, like he’d just remembered she was there. “Didn’t Ty tell you to steer clear of this loser?”

I felt every muscle in her body going rigid in defiance. I wanted her to tell this guy off just as much as I wanted her to stay silent and let me “deal” with the situation. In the end, she proved we were more cut from the same fabric than I’d realized.

“Ty doesn’t control my every move,” she said, her voice even and strong. “He can’t tell me what I can and can’t do.”

Boy who was getting on my nerves, about to wear a dent the shape of my fist in his forehead the rest of his life, chuckled like she’d just said the cutest thing he’d ever heard. “That’s not what I hear, sweetie. That’s not what I hear.”

With a cluck of his tongue, another guy behind us reached for Emma, but before he could pull her away from me, I was in his face, wondering if I’d used teleportation or just moved that fast.

“Don’t. Touch. Her.”

I didn’t think my words, or the breath steaming out of my teeth, needed any further clarification as to what the repercussions would be if my warning went unheeded. The guy I was staring down in front of me got it—he saw I was a man on death row with nothing to lose if he didn’t listen to me.

The guy behind me didn’t get it.

His arms had just ringed around Emma’s arms when I was on him. And by on him, I mean literally on him. Seeing him touching her in a way that was the opposite of gentle lit a stick of dyn**ite in me, and I became a bundle of muscle and fury controlled by animal instinct.

“Keep your hands off her!”

Tackling him to the floor, I pinned his shoulders to the ground with my knees and made good use of his head by imagining it was my punching bag back home. I made a Picasso of his face before the next guy could get to me.

It was as simple as a tuck and roll to dodge a grown man’s best attempts at ending me. Pathetic. Why didn’t men learn to fight like men anymore, instead of the caveman-chimpanzee creature with raw physicality they’d supposedly evolved from?

Two down, ten more to go, provided no else decided to join in and earn a purple heart of stupidity.

Shoving off my back, I flipped to a stand as the goon platoon made a rush at their enemy target. An explosion of fists and feet peppered me. In holding to the man code I ascribed to, although man was a stretch in this instance, I allowed them all their one hit, punch, kick, or sucker-shot.

And then it was my turn.

I knew I had this great advantage known as Immortality, but even at that, it shouldn’t have been so easy. Yes, my muscles were like a kind of pliable adamantium, but they weren’t wielded with invincibility. Yes, my instincts were the sharpest kind of sharp, but they weren’t so perfect that they didn’t let a single shot land on me. Yes, I was a helluva good fighter, but throwing down with these guys was different.

I was fighting for a purpose, a personal vendetta, a war I’d actively participated in instead of being told I was going to play a role in and that brought an intricacy to my fighting that shouldn’t be allowed in life, both Mortal and Immortal.

Everything stilled, sound blurred into a dull echo, and I used this stolen moment in time to locate Emma. She was in the same place I’d left her, eyes bulging, hands covering her mouth, looking every shade of terrified, but she was far enough to the side she was in the danger free zone.

But, just to be safe, I pushed our ball of man rage a few feet in the opposite direction. With the force of a tidal wave, time and sound crashed down on me again, right along with ten bodies weighing in at a deuce to a deuce and a half each. Calming my mind, the rest of me went into a frenzy, fists connecting with flesh, knees smashing unprotected soft spots, forearms crushing windpipes—it was all too easy.