"Life-threatening?" John snorted. "Aw, c'mon, Kit, you were more dangerous to those two fuckwits than they were to you. You'd a bigger knife and twice the brains and balls of both of them put together, and you bloody well proved it." He almost smiled at the memory--one thug castrated where he stood, the other with his face half clawed off. His first reaction when he'd heard, before he'd realized how badly the incident had shaken Kit, was to be proud. "Hell, you were always going on at me not to get into fights without you to back me up. Damsel in distress is not a role that suits you."

He rubbed tiredly at his neck. "I'm sorry you were scared. I am. And for what it's worth, I did try to live up to my end, harder than you can imagine." And more successfully than she would ever believe. The darker shit, things he'd known Kit really, truly couldn't handle--none of those had ever come anywhere near her.

He rested his folded arms on his knees, speaking calmly and deliberately now. "But I couldn't wall off half my life from the other half, and I couldn't just turn my back on it all and walk away. If I'd tried, I'd've got stabbed from behind. I was stupid to pretend that wasn't so." And that was exactly what Kit had said, wasn't it? Stupid, selfish bastard. He couldn't deny the charge. Though some other things she'd said about him that day weren't quite so accurate.

He grimaced wryly at the question. "What, you and me, stubborn? Perish the thought. You're obviously thinking of two other cantankerous pub-dwelling mules."