Rafael turned and walked toward the barn without a word. I followed, because that's what I did now. I followed him. Even into death.
"They're going to be okay," Rafael said quietly as we watched from the doorway. "Even if we're not."
"We're going to be okay too."
"You don't know that."
"I know we've survived everything else." I moved closer to him. "Alaska. Constantine's eagles. The catacombs. Rio. We're still here."
"Barely." His hand moved to his eyepatch. "And we keep losing pieces."
I caught his hand before he could touch it. "We're not losing anything else. Not tomorrow. Not ever."
Rafael looked at me. Really looked at me with that one remaining eye. "You can't promise that."
"Watch me."
He almost smiled. "You're an idiot."
"Yeah. But I'm your idiot."
"My idiot," Rafael repeated.
His hand tightened around mine. Then he turned and walked out of the barn, pulling me with him. The Montana sun was setting, painting the sky orange and red like blood in water. Rafael didn't stop until we were past the house, past where anyone could see us, into the trees at the edge of the property.
Then he shoved me against a pine tree hard enough to rattle my teeth.
His hand fisted in my hair, yanking my head back, and when his mouth found mine. It wasn't a kiss; it was a claim, all teeth and violence and the kind of desperate possession that came from knowing we might not survive tomorrow.
When he pulled back, his eye was dark. Hungry. "At least I know if we die tomorrow, we die together."
My breath caught. "Rafael—"
“It’s stupid, isn’t it? It hasn’t been that long since I wanted to kill you.”
I swallowed. “Admit it. You were never really going to kill me.”
“Maybe,” he allowed. “But I was so blind. Even more blind than I am now with one eye. The irony is, losing this eye? It’s let me see clearer than ever before. For the first time in my life, I’m making my own choices. Tomorrow, live or die, it’ll be on my own terms. Better to die free than live as someone else’s pawn.”
I clutched his shirt. “I don’t plan to die tomorrow.”
“You really think we can win this?”
I shrugged. “Why not? Stranger things have happened.”
Rafael's mouth crashed against mine again, harder this time. When he broke away, his breathing was ragged. "I'm not losing you tomorrow. I can’t. Not when I just…”
"You won't." I grabbed his wrist, holding his hand against my throat.
His jaw clenched. The last light bled from the sky behind him, turning his hair copper and his remaining eye molten. Tomorrow we'd walk into darkness to face Constantine and his eagle and whatever else waited in that maze. Tomorrow we might die.
But tonight...
Tonight we were alive.
"Come on," I said, pulling him toward the house. "We've got hours until dawn and I don’t plan to waste another minute."
Lorenzo's fingers dug intomy shoulders as we crashed through the bedroom door, his mouth never leaving mine. I kicked it shut behind us, the wood slamming hard enough to shake the frame. His hands were already tearing at my shirt, buttons scattering across the floor with soft clicks.
