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Alec tilted my face until our eyes met, kissing my tears away. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to run away with me?’
‘I do. I want to hide in your arms, stay hidden away with you. But I need to go back. To stop Maeve from taking my place.’
Alec sighed, his fingers tightening against my lower back as he took another kiss from me, letting me pour my angst into him, his lips like a band-aid to my breaking heart. ‘If you need me, you can call me anytime.’
‘I will.’
Except for the fact that I’d likely be killed when I took Harold out. You didn’t take down the head of a crime syndicate with no repercussions. It would be worth it to rid the planet of Harold Thompson.
I’d take death over the misery of living with him, and without Alec and my family, any day.
‘We need to get cleaned up, dressed and packed up,’ Alec said against my lips, his voice cracking as he spoke.
So we did.
Darkness settling over me with each step toward the life I’d thought I could run from.
I’d make Harold regret ever messing with me.
THIRTY-FOUR
ALEC
Her silence worried me.
During the plane journey back she’d barely uttered a word, staring out of the window and tearing her paper napkin in her lap to a million pieces.
It was killing me. I’d thought hard about whether to just kidnap her. Drag her to a remote cottage somewhere and keep her in my arms until everything played out and passed at home. I wanted to protect her, to be there for her. But what could I do?
I toyed with the knife in my pocket, the metal warm beneath my fingers. It had cost me the phone I’d stolen to smuggle it through the airport. Thankfully, the young guy on the metal detectors had been open to bribery. It was one thing that had been with me for years. It had been there as part of my work, as protection and as a threat. Usually, the touch of it by my side brought peace to me, but not anymore. What use was my knife if I couldn’t protect my girl with it?
The car pulled up outside of her mansion; her father standing on the steps with a furrowed brow.
Before she got out of the car, I reached over and took her fingers in my own, squeezing them firmly as she took a shaky breath.
‘You’ll be okay,’ I told her, trying to convince myself in the same breath.
She turned toward me, fixing those green eyes that had captured my soul. ‘Thank you for everything, Alec.’
‘For what? Taking you back here?’
‘No. For giving me a glimpse of how good it can be. I got to have everything I’ve ever craved for a little while, and I’m glad it happened. That we happened.’
I choked down the torrent of emotion that threatened to send me into a tailspin. I had to be strong for her.
‘You are everything I never knew I needed--‘
The wrenching of the car door cut me off mid-sentence, Logan peering inside of the car as I dropped her fingers and cleared my throat. ‘Esther, you crazy fuck. I can’t believe you ran away. Props to you. Best get your ass inside, though. Dad is livid and Harold’s on the warpath.’
He helped her out of the car as I followed a few paces behind, desperately trying to push my crumbled walls back into place around my heart. She’d obliterated them, and I needed their protection more than ever.
She’ll be okay.
She has to be okay.
Would I be?
I followed behind Logan and Esther, hyperaware of her every movement. The tremble of her fingers as she reached for the door, the turn of her head, checking where I was. The way she stiffened as Logan pulled her gently across the threshold.
