He Didn’t Kidnap Me. Not Exactly novel Chapter 336

He Didn’t Kidnap Me. Not Exactly

Chapter 336

[Daisy’s POV)

I didn’t say anything back to him.

Not because I didn’t have an answer. I had one, fully formed, sitting right there behind my teeth the entire time he spoke. I’m not inconvenienced by DeLuca. I’m in love with him. That was the whole response, clean and simple, and I couldn’t get a single syllable of it out, because I’d been too stunned to do

anything except stand there while Archer looked at me once more and walked away.

Alone now, I let myself actually think about it.

I’d known Archer was being nice to me. Obviously. That part had never been subtle. But I hadn’t clocked it as this, as something with actual weight behind it, and now that I knew, everything felt one degree more complicated than it had five minutes ago. Not complicated in the sense that it changed anything real. I knew exactly who I wanted, exactly who I was with. But knowing Archer felt that strongly, and knowing I hadn’t handled the moment at all, fat there

unresolved in a way I badly wanted to hand off to DeLuca.

Except DeLuca was resting. Actually resting, for once, which meant this particular problem was mine to sit with alone for now.

So I did.

The rest of that evening passed in a kind of hush I hadn’t expected from a group this chaotic. DeLuca didn’t so much as stir, which honestly relieved me more than it worried me- the man never rested, not once in all the time I’d known him, and it felt like every skipped hour of sleep across his entire life had finally caught up and collected its debt in one go.

My mother woke briefly at some point, murmured something I didn’t catch, and drifted back under. Everyone else settled into their own private routines. I stayed tucked into my corner, quiet, hyperaware of Archer without ever looking directly at him, grateful, genuinely, deeply grateful – that he didn’t come find me again.

Nathan, for is part, made no noise at all. Wherever he’d retreated to, he stayed there, silent, which felt like its own kind of statement.

Tessa, meanwhile, appeared to have been conscripted. I caught fragments of it drifting across the room throughout the night – Mabel requesting a different jacket to use as a pillow, Mabel needing someone to fan her because the air felt stagnant, Mabel wanting her hair out of her face but not wanting to touch

it herself,

Tessa handled all of it without complaint, which either made her a saint or meant she’d simply run out of energy to argue. I genuinely couldn’t tell which.

Eventually I slept too, because even exhaustion this specific and this earned eventually wins.

Morning arrived, and with it, motion. Everyone was awake, and the reason was obvious the second I opened my eyes – DeLuca, upright, alert, moving through the space like the last twenty–four hours hadn’t put a single dent in him.

It was good news. Genuinely good news, seeing him look like himself again instead of pale and bandaged on a cot. I loved seeing it.

I loved it slightly less once I understood what he’d woken everyone up for.

We stood outside, behind the unfinished shell of the building wed been hiding in, lined up in a row white DeLuca faced us from a short distance away, hands folded behind this back. Between us and him sat a row of guns, collected from the men who now, apparently, answered to me.

The mi fuld tense and vilem unti! Nathan broke it.

ワ

15:04 Fri, Sep 4 ) M

Chapter 336

I didn’t sign up for this, he said. I’m not doing this shit.”

Dabuca’s gaze snapped to him instantly, sharp enough that I saw Nathan’s spine straighten involuntarily. Then something in DeLuca’s expression eased into

ow, almost amused smirk.

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