She nods once, like she’s been expecting doom to stay punctual. “What now?”
Now is where a smart man hands her over. Now is where a good cousin calls Ale and tells him everything. Now is where a better man than me doesn’t want to touch her so badly he has to curl his fingers into his palms until the hunger passes.
“Now we move,” I ground out instead. “Northwest. Cut through campus, over to Broadway, then up past the seminary. I’ll keep eyes off you and meet you at the park entrance.”
“And if you don’t?”
“Keep going.”
Her mouth tilts, not quite a smile though. “You say that a lot.”
“I mean it every time.”
We stand there one beat too long, the city throwing sound at us like it wants us to forget the private war we’re in. Somewhere a siren turns a corner. Somewhere a phone rings a little too sharply.
“Matteo,” she whispers, and it’s my name how she used to say it, like it was both a dare and a home.
“What?”
She shakes her head. “Nothing.”
She turns to go, but my hand moves before I can stop it. I catch the edge of her hood and tug it higher over her head, a small stupid gesture that feels like so much more. My knuckles brush her throat, eyes catching a thin gold chain but all I can focus on is the fury rolling through me again. It’s a good thing I already killed that fucker for touching her. Heat flashes through me, and she flinches like the cut stung and not because I touched her.
“Go.” I force the word out, voice low.
She does. I watch the blonde of her hair vanish under the hood and the crowd, and I tell myself I did the right thing back then. I tell myself the world I kept her and the baby from is exactly the one that’s after her now.
The lie tastes the same as it did years ago.
I push off the wall and step into the street, choosing the kind of sin I can live with: buying her another few minutes, another block, and another chance.
CHAPTER 24
ROAD TRIP GAMES
Caitríona
We meet at the edge of Riverside Park where the path narrows, and the traffic drowns out the mad war drum that thumps beneath my breastbone. Matteo falls into step beside me without touching. We move like two people who have forgotten how to walk together.
“I lost them.” He swivels his head over his shoulder, scanning behind us once. “For now.”
“For now,” I echo.
“I know a place.” He keeps his voice low. “It’s safe. Ale would never think to look for you in a Gemini safehouse.”
Every muscle in me tightens. “A Gemini—so, your world.” My thoughts swirl back in time to the boy I met on the beach, the one without a last name or an empire. I still remember the shock that registered when I found out who he really was years later.
“Mine,” he mutters. “Not theirs.”
Same thing, some unhelpful part of me thinks. The rest of me counts footpaths out of the park, dogs, children, and foreign faces. “I don’t hole up where I can’t walk out.”
“You’ll be able to walk out.” His jaw ticks. “If you want.”
I hate that theif you wantlands soft. I hate that I believe him. I hatehim…
“Fine,” I finally murmur. “But I drive.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You drove on the left side of the road for four years, Kitty Cat. We’re crossing a state line on the right. You trying to get us arrested before Tiernan catches us?”
