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I shook my head. “No, probably not.” He wanted me to play along, but I didn’t see how this line of questioning would get us anywhere good.
The man walking behind us shuffled forward. “Would you shut the fuck up already?” he growled right beside Corbin’s head.
Corbin only chuckled. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
This time I did twist my head toward him in confusion. “What?” What had he been thinking?
What else hadn’t he felt the need to impart me with?
“The Grandmaster likes to know what’s going on in his organization. It’s pretty typical of a mob boss,” Corbin said to me as if we were having a lovely stroll in the afternoon through a park and this conversation was one you had with people every day. “He’s going to be pissed, but that’s not the important part.”
“It isn’t?” I asked. It sounded pretty important to me. I know if I had a mob boss I reported to, I’d be shaking in my boots if I made him upset.
Corbin squeezed my hand tighter. “No, that’s not the important part of this conversation. Since they can’t kill me until I give him the password, I have a couple of things I need to say.”
I looked at him again, taking my eyes off my steps and almost tripping over a stick. “Such as?”
He nodded and then gently swung our hands back and forth. Corbin definitely thought we were on a leisurely walk in the forest.
“I should’ve said them a lot sooner. I have a feeling me waiting is what put us in this predicament. But even knowing our lives might end soon, I can’t regret a single moment I shared with you, Hazel. The time we spent together has been perfect.”
I didn’t know about the perfect part.
“Corbin,” I said, trying to meet his gaze, but once I did, I found him staring at me so intensely I couldn’t look away.
“I will leave this earth and know in my last moments I found my soulmate. The person God put me on this planet to love.”
“What are you saying?” I questioned, knowing I’d come to a similar conclusion in my head a few minutes earlier but wanting him to say it out loud first.
He smiled and walked closer until we were right next to one another, our hips meeting. “I’m saying that I love you, Hazel Webb. I should have told you the moment I figured it out, which was pretty much five seconds before someone took shots at us outside the bed-and-breakfast.”
Holy shit. Corbin Kensington loved me?
He’d known that soon? Now my quiet declaration didn’t seem so earth-shattering. If Corbin figured it out as early as the bed-and-breakfast then I lagged. Again.
“I love you too. I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner and got us into trouble.” If only I’d been honest with Corbin, who knows where we could be right now.
Definitely not trudging through the woods to a set of shallow graves.
CHAPTER22
CORBIN
Hazel and I spent the last of our walk staring at one another. I tried to convey every single sentiment I said into my expression so she’d see the truth in my words. I wanted to lay her down in the grass and make love to her all night. To show her exactly what I meant when I said I loved her, but there wasn’t time and I didn’t want an audience.
She said she loved me back, and it sounded honest. We both waited too long to tell the other person, and our time might have been running short, but it didn’t matter because I’d go to the grave knowing Hazel felt the same about me as I did her. It was impossible to make her see how much I loved her. How one look at her face changed my entire day for the better.
I’d never given up hope that we’d survive tonight’s ordeal, but hearing that she loved me back gave me a renewed sense of determination. Drake hadn’t come to our rescue yet, but I had to believe he had a reason. If he didn’t show soon, I’d have to orchestrate something on my own. Either way, Hazel and I were going to live through this.
We had a life to start together, and soon.
We came out of the woods a few minutes after our declarations and stared at the large, open grassy patch at the back of the old white church. We hadn’t used a trail to get here, but we exited the woods through one trailhead at the church. Two cars were parked in the lot, but rather than walk toward them, Bernard marched right to the back door steps of the church and kicked open the wooden door.
We continued into the church as if we were a procession, and they forced us to sit in the first pew. “Ridge won’t be thrilled about this,” I said, making Hazel comfortable beside me.
What exactly was their plan? Bernard and Thumbs had to have a plan. They weren’t walking us around Pelican Bay with no clue what to do. Were they? Bernard might not have been as smart as the Grandmaster, but you didn’t survive this long in a criminal unit without the ability to be a proper criminal.
The not knowing drove me insane, and I hoped Bernard had a villain complex where, once he thought he had the upper hand, he’d give me the details. “Are you planning to kill us in the church? That’s pretty low. You’ll definitely be going to hell for that,” I said, my words echoing in the open space.
