“How can you possibly know that?” I asked, my voice still hoarse. I wanted so badly to believe him. For this to be real, for this not to be some hallucination I was having because I’d fallen so damn hard for Aidan O’Leary.
“Because I looked into my heart, and I asked God to show me what I should do.” He put one hand to my face, brushing my cheek. “You are so gorgeous, do you know that? Inside and out.” He chuckled at my expression. “Yeah, we’re gonna have to work on that.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know. ButIdo, finally. It was never black-and-white. It was never one thing or the other. It was what philosophers of logic would call a false dichotomy.”
“Idefinitelydon’t understand that.”
“Then understand this,” he said with a nervous smile, and slid a hand around the back of my neck. “I love you, Matteo Vitali.”
“But you can’t—”
“Oh, yes I can. This whole week you’ve been telling me to ask you for what I want. So that’s what I’m doing. I wantyou, Teo. I want all of you, I want to know you inside and out, I want to make love to you every night and I want to meet your family and, oh—” He pulled me in to kiss him, his mouth begging for mine, lips trembling, until I wrapped my arms around him tight enough to make him gasp, and kissed him with everything I had in me.
“Okay,” I said afterwards, my voice cracked with emotion. “Anything you want, baby. Anything. Because I—I love you, too.”
“I know,” he murmured. “But it’s still nice to hear.”
And then from behind us I heard a terse voice. “This is all very touching, but you two are sitting ducks. How about we get the fuck out of here?”
I glared at O’Hara over Aidan’s shoulder, but he had a point. “Let’s go,” I told Aidan.
He nodded, his eyes shining and damp. And then he said, “I want you to fuck me into the mattress tonight, by the way.”
I gave a sharp laugh of shock and pulled him close to kiss him again, but then I heard it: a squeal of tires up the road, an engine gunning.
Chapter Forty-Three
Teo
Together, O’Hara and I bundled Aidan into the back seat of my car, and O’Hara got in with him. I checked the side mirror as I pulled out, and at the top of the street, coming down the hill, I saw another fucking Hummer.
I hit the gas and Aidan and O’Hara were thrown back against the seat as we accelerated. The other Donovan cars peeled out after us, so at least this new Hummer would have to go through a few of them before they got to us.
Unless there wasanotherfucking Hummer waiting for us somewhere along the way.
“What about my parents?” Aidan spluttered, and O’Hara shoved him down so his blond hair wouldn’t give snipers an easy target. The windows were tinted, but not as opaque as I’d like them, and not even bullet resistant glass would withstand a high-powered rifle shot.
I made a sharp turn, then caught O’Hara’s eyes in the rearview. “Parents?”
He checked his phone. “Fitzgerald has them.”
Aidan leaned over between the seats to look at me. “Who’s following us? Is it a Hum—” he began, and O’Hara yanked him back.
“Let the man concentrate,” he said, and I sent him a grateful look in the mirror. It was hard enough to concentrate on driving in these strange streets while watching out for any oncoming attacks, without having Aidan hanging over my shoulder. There were already more than enough distractions.
“Teo,” Aidan begged. “Please.”
“It’ll be okay,” I told him. I only hoped it wasn’t a lie.
The Hummer stayed back, though, like it was biding its time, which only made me worry more that we were driving into an ambush. “Any news?” I asked O’Hara, who checked his phone.
“All clear at Hillview. You wanna make a straight run there?”
“Don’t see what else we can do, although I don’t like it.”
“Gauntlet?”
