“Do what?”
“Don’t give me fake-ass smiles, Evie. I don’t want them,” he grunts. “I know you’re upset. I want the real you. Give me whatever emotion you’re feeling, because that’s what I deserve.”
“I’mfine,” I tell him.
“You will be, but right now, you’re confused and you’re hurting. And you have every right to be. But don’t sit here and lie to me,” he says. “I never lie to you.”
“No, you just keep truths from me, like the fact you were stalking me when I was sixteen, pretending I was your dead girlfriend,” I spit out in frustration.
“I did.” He nods. It’s odd. He doesn’t try to weasel his way out of this shit. He hasn’t told some bullshit story. He told me the truth. Which is the only reason I believe him when he says he’s in love with me. Not her.
Or it could just be me believing the truth I want. I don’t want to lose him.
“Just so you know, I let myself fall for you because I thought… here is a guy who will never do anything to hurt me. Here is the guy I look for when I wake up, the one I want holding me when I go to sleep and the only person in the world who has ever been able to quiet the nightmares,” I say. “I fell in love with you because you saw all of me and loved me anyway. You are so in tune with me that it’s like you’re in my head half the time. I love that. I do. But right now, it’s just pissing me off. Get out of my fucking head, Emmanuel. Let me live in a fantasy bubble where everything is fine. Where I am fine. Where I’m not falling apart on the inside because I’m about to go and face my biggest demon.”
“Okay.” Emmanuel’s arm wraps around my shoulders, and he pulls me against his side. “We will pretend everything is fine.” He kisses my forehead. “I love you.”
“I love you,” I tell him.
“No.” He shakes his head. “I loveyou,” he repeats.
“I know.”
“That’s better.” He smiles down at me and then presses his lips to mine. “I need you to never forget that.”
“How many jets do you own, E?” I ask, looking around the luxurious plane.
“Two. Well, one now. We lost one,” he says.
“How do you lose a jet?”
“When Paz was taken in, he was about to board the jet. No one has seen it since. So either the fed hid it somewhere or found a way to confiscate it.”
“That’s a lot of money to just lose.” I frown. “Can’t you find it. Like don’t these things have GPS on them? Or an air tag or something.”
“They do, but it was switched off. And it’s not worth the hassle. I can buy another one,” Emmanuel says, like buying a jet is no different from going to the store and buying a pairof shoes.
“That’s insane,” I tell him. “Maybe you should get a pink one.”
“A pink one?” He laughs.
“Yeah, put everyone off the scent. What big scary cartel boss would be flying around in a pink jet?”
“None,” he says. “Neither will I.”
“Never say never,” I tell him.
I look up at my childhood home. “It’s exactly the same,” I tell Emmanuel. My hand is gripping his tight. I haven’t faced my mother in years.
“You don’t have to do this, Evie. We can turn around right now,” Emmanuel says.
“No, I do. I need to know,” I tell him. “We can’t start our marriage with unanswered questions.”
“We can, because we don’t need answers. We have each other. That’s all I care about,” he says.
“I know, but I want to know. Just… don’t kill her.”
“I’m not going to kill your mother, Evie,” he grumbles.
