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“Stop it, Country Club. You’ll never succeed.”
She physically winces at my words.
This girl’s walking out of here alive and well, out of an open door. She’ll give me money to run away, and I’ll give her a life to run back to.
Pea looks at me like I’ve just murdered her whole family, biting her lips to contain whatever it is she really wants to say to me.
“Why are you here?”
“Because it’s probably where I belong.”
“Is it?” Her voice is hoarse.
“You’re crazy, uncalculated and lethal for me.” I take a step in her direction. “So yeah. Being by your side is exactly where I should be.”
Checkmate, Godfrey. Your clock starts ticking now.
It should alarm me that I’m more excited about the prospect of killing Godfrey and Seb than I am with getting my own life back. But the truth is, life has become such a chore to maintain over the last few years, it’ll take me a long time to find my lust for it again.
He is standing in front of me, wearing his mask and to my dismay, my toes curl against the damp floor.
Even through the mask, his chin is strong and high. There’s something incredibly proud about this broken man. Nate’s fingers brush the wall as he paces like a predator in my direction.
“I fucked up. You confided in me, told me what they did to you, then I went and did the very same thing on the grounds of being drunk, horny and a prick,” he admits, his tone calm. “But I want you to know one thing. I’m a killer, I’m a murderer, I am a prick, but I’m fair. The minute you told me your story, you were already free. These walls,” he knocks on the concrete, “they mean nothing. Up until this afternoon, I thought I was going to let you walk away then go do my own thing. But then something dawned on me,” he says and inches closer causing my jaw to go slack in anticipation. “I’m not fucking done with you, Pea, and if it’s up to me? I’m not done fucking you, either.”
I hug my body, trying to protect myself from something that’s already embedded deep inside me, to shake away the looming calamity that’s moving my way. He rattles something within me that’s not ready to be moved. Not right now, and certainly not by him. “Nate.” His name on my lips sounds like a warning. On some level, it is. He stops, his mask still offering this wild, up-to-no-good smile. “I don’t want us to part ways yet. I want us to flip hourglasses. To stir up chaos. To start a blood bath.”
He stops next to me. His hand drops to his hip and he lifts the hem of his shirt, rubbing his six pack.
“Prescott?”
“Yes?”
“I’m switching teams.”
My knees turn to jelly as my body starts quivering with released tension.
He is switching teams.
He is setting me free.
God, he’s going to help me glue the pieces of my broken soul together.
All the tears I kept from him come spilling down, my face damp and happy and my heart so, extremely full. I’m a crier. I cry when I get a paper-cut, when it’s that time of the month and when Bambi’s mother dies. The only reason I haven’t cried in front of Nate yet is because I don’t let my enemies see me break.
But he is not an enemy. Not anymore.
“You won’t regret it,” I say, shaking my head, trying to gain control over my emotions. He needs to see me strong. “Together, we’ll overthrow his empire.”
Nate doesn’t answer, but his eyes are hungry behind the mask. It dawns on me that I’m about to see his face, and something unsettling stirs in me. It’s not that I don’t want to see him. I do. I’m dying to lay my eyes on the man I had sex with, who’s about to give me life back, who’s been the center of my world for the past few weeks.
But I’m not ready.
He’s become a fantasy; a bubble I don’t want to pop. A feather of hope that’s tickling but not quite touching me the way I crave. The minute he takes off the mask, the mystery is solved, and reality will kick in. A reality I’m not entirely prepared for, despite the fact I pushed for it for so long.
A reality that consists of people getting killed, of us running away, of trying to get by, of peeking over our shoulders, every second of every day.
Life starts here.
He erases the space between us with a long step, his abs bumping into my chest. My breath hitches and my spine tingles. This is bad. No, bad is forgetting to turn off the oven when you leave the house. This is disastrous.
“Where will you go after this is all over, Pea?” His mask touches my lips.
