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She hears it, too, her smile fading. “I guess we’d better get moving.” Now I wonder what she dreads more, going home or spending the rest of her life without what I just gave her. Probably married off to some asshole who’ll treat her like nothing more than a possession and expect her to moan at his every clumsy touch.
And now I don’t know whether it would’ve been better if we’d never done this.
“Let’s go. Wash up quick. We leave in ten.” It’s better this way, better that we don’t get lost in all the feelings and shit. Better for her, definitely.
I’ve already fucked her up enough.
Chapter Nine – Olivia
Now I know what it feels like to get what I want and sort of wish I hadn’t. Because now I’ll have memories of Beckett for the rest of my life—and I think it might’ve been better if all I ever did was wonder and dream and fantasize.
Nobody’s ever going to compare to him. Nobody ever would have, anyway, not with me loving him since I was a kid. All these years I’ve thought about him. Fantasized. Wished he was mine, that he would look at me just once like I was a woman and not a little girl.
I have to spend the rest of my life pretending I never got the only thing I ever really wanted. Besides having Sera back, that is. But even my broken heart knows there are certain things that can never be.
“We should arrive in a few minutes.” Beckett checks the GPS coordinates on his phone, mounted on the dash. “You’ll be more comfortable there. Maybe you’ll actually be able to get some sleep.”
I’m sure. It’s not like my head is spinning or anything. “What’s the plan here? Why aren’t we driving straight through? Nobody followed us to the motel, right?”
“But now that one of Bernardi’s guys died on the road tonight, they’ll be scouring the roads for us.”
“And we know for sure he was one of them?”
“Yeah. We know for sure.” I can barely understand him, his teeth are clenched so tight. Is it wrong that he comes off ridiculously sexy when he’s like this? Our lives might still be in danger and my body craves him more than ever. I guess it’s the adrenaline, or the extremely recent memory of his face wedged between my thighs. Heat flares up in that exact location when I remember it. I wonder if he’s dealing with the same memories.
One thing I don’t have to wonder: it’s never happening again. He’s too committed to his work. And to being alive, which I doubt he’d be for long if Dad ever found out.
“So the guys back at the house are trying to come up with a route we can take that might not be monitored,” he continues. “If that fails, we’ll hook up with the Brunos and have somebody meet us at the safe house. They can make sure you at least get home safely.”
“What about you?”
“What about me? I don’t matter the way you do. I’ll find my own way back—maybe I’ll switch vehicles to be harder to track. That’s none of your concern.”
“Don’t talk to me that way. You sound like my father.”
He makes a choking sound. “Do me a favor and don’t compare me to him so soon after we fucked.” My cheeks are hot and my tongue is tied, so I settle on a strangled grunt. He has a point.
“Thank you for that. Back there.” Ugh, why did I say anything? Now I wish I could shove the words back into my mouth. “Is that lame? I’m sorry.”
“Not lame. Erm… thank you for letting me be the first.” He isn’t looking at me, though, staring out at the dark road instead. I’m almost glad he can’t see the way my face is burning. I might as well be fifteen all over again, with a crush on the hot bodyguard.
“I don’t think I need to tell you that can’t happen again,” he adds. “And we can’t talk about it outside this car, right now.”
“You don’t need to tell me.” I can’t hold back a sigh before looking out the window, away from him. My heart hurts so much it’s making tears well up in my eyes. When he reaches over and squeezes my knee one of the tears spills over. Why is life so fucking unfair sometimes?
We turn onto a narrow dirt lane cutting through an office park. “It’s just beyond the other side of the complex,” he explains. “It looks like your run-of-the-mill office block but it’s really a series of connected residences sometimes used by family associates.” There’s so much about my own family that I don’t know.
We’re coming up on it now. It looks abandoned, dark, and it sort of creeps me out until we pull around back and see a trio of black cars sitting in a row. “They’re ours,” he announces. It’s a relief and a letdown all at once. I have to go back to pretending to hate him for dragging me home.
And that’s exactly what’s on my mind as all three cars explode.
The sound is deafening, drowning out my screams as Beckett floors the gas. We fly past the cars and I can feel the heat coming from them as they burn. Were the men inside? Or are they already dead somewhere in the building?
“Stay down!” Beckett barks. I lean forward with my hands clasped over the back of my neck and pray for the first time in as long as I can remember while the car swerves and squeals as he takes a hard left that throws me against my door.
I don’t know how long this goes on, but it feels like forever before Beckett pulls to a stop. I lift my head and take an experimental look around, but his hand clamps over the back of my neck and holds me in place. “Stay that way. Don’t move until I come back.”
“Where are you going? Don’t leave me?”
