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Tomorrow night while Cyrus is busy waiting at The Playground for me to deliver his money, Reece and I are supposed to meet at the warehouse, sans tracking devices, where we’ll clean out Cyrus’s safe, getting the flash drive along with enough cash to start our new lives on the run.
It’s a good plan. It’d work, too.
If I was sticking to it.
Pulling around to the back of the resort, Reece parks near the dumpsters, then rotates in his seat to regard me. He’s going to say it again. I can tell. But just like before, I still don’t know how to respond. When I say I love you to Kordin, it’s a lie. I’m fluent in lies. If I tried reciprocating Reece’s heartfelt declaration, it’d be like trying to speak a different language, one I’m practically ignorant to.
That doesn’t mean I don’t…
That doesn’t mean I don’t feel that way about him. I wouldn’t be preparing myself for what I’m about to do if I didn’t.
“I love you,” he says, his obsidian eyes holding that same ferocity some men get when they ejaculate, a gratifying discharge in three small words instead of one to two tablespoons of semen.
A three-syllable release is too simple to express what’s inside me. Whatever’s at the center of the storm brewing in there, it’s much bigger, much stronger than three words could ever portray.
“I…” I swallow thickly, the sound thunderous in my ears.
“I’m not expecting you to say it. I just… You should know.”
So should he.
“Reece,” I start again. “I would kill for you.” Five words. Five words that encapsulate my love entirely, the only kind I’ve ever known. The only kind I’ve ever trusted.
His is buttered popcorn under the veil of darkness and whispered vows in a lover’s embrace. Mine is methodical silence in the face of peril and gasped last breaths of an enemy. One is sweet, the other bitter, neither fiercer than the other. Like Honeysuckle and Lily of the Valley—both hold the same meaning, but in very, very different ways.
Reece’s black eyebrows pull together, an unreadable expression on his chiseled face.
“You’re fucking perfect.”
We meet each other over the center console, our lips clashing into one another’s as our hands grip anything they can—hair, ears, cheeks, necks—until there is no space, no time, no him, no me. Only us, together.
Our foreheads still connected, Reece tells me, “Don’t kill anyone for me, Snow. Just breathe. Okay? Can you do that? Can you keep existing? Please?”
Opening my eyes, I gaze into his. My efficiency in lies didn’t used to have any parameters. Now I’m finding it does. In this moment, I could lie. I just don’t want to.
“I’ve made it this long.” I pull away, hoping the distance will hide my evasion. “What’s another thirty-seven hours?”
Reece nods, repeating, “Thirty-seven hours.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Reece is the one to stay quiet. Does he sense my deception? This one out of all the others?
I don’t look back at him after I get out. In my bikini and bathrobe again, I enter the resort with the superiority of a hollow in her natural habitat. I don’t know how but my keycard stayed in the robe’s pocket during Friday night’s altercation, so I head straight for my room and let myself in to shower and pack the few items I unloaded before my unexpected departure.
Everything ready to return to my previous life, I sit on the bed and make a call. Luckily, Cat answers just before the voicemail kicks on, her voice groggy.
“I’m moving.”
After a hesitation, she says, “Lexi? Are you fucking for real?”
“Yes.”
“After all this time?”
I nod even though she can’t see it. “I have to.” I’ve put it off long enough.
“When?”
