Apparently, I have a shitty imagination, because I wasn’t imagining her well enough. It’s not just that she’s gorgeous; it’s not that simple. With Rosabelle, her beauty is just the beginning. Her brain and body are so vividly connected that I can always see her mind working. She’s like a tightly coiled current, a live wire sparking dangerously, even though she lives in a breathless sort of stillness. There’s some sort of alchemy in all this that makes her arresting in person; she’s physicallystriking. When I see her I feel like I’ve been knocked off a cliff.
And the way she looks at me—
Those fucking eyes. Those sleepy, soft, blinking eyes. I swear she only looks at me with those eyes.
It makes me want to take her to bed.
I should probably pick out a tombstone instead; get my affairs in order; leave all my stuff to Gigi and Roman and my little niece-or nephew-to-be.
At that sobering thought, I almost slow down, losing my rhythm. My left foot lands hard in another deep puddle, splashing water up my jeans.
Guilt batters me in waves.
The reminder of Juliette’s impending due date is a blow. No one knows the gender of the baby; she and Warner wanted it to be a surprise. Personally, I think Warner didn’t want to know because he didn’t want to get too attached. The truth is, we still have no idea whether the baby will survive the birth.
The truth is—
Shit, the truth is, Kenji was right. Warner’s been under crushing levels of stress lately, and I’ve done nothing but make things worse. And if I let Rosabelle escape when I had a chance to bring her in, Warner will never trust me again. He’ll think I let her go on purpose. Forget handing out pamphlets in a hot dog costume; my life as I know it will be over.
He might charge me with treason.
I was the one who brought Rosabelle here to begin with; this is my mess to clean up. The least I can do is finish what I started, and right now, trying to disguise anything about this shitshow is pointless. Rosabelle might be wearing dark, inconspicuous clothing, tail and all, but I’m wearing a windbreaker with reflective stripes that form an obvious V right down the middle of my chest. I practically glow in the dark. There’s a zero percent chance we haven’t already been spotted. It’s only a matter of minutes before—
Shit.
I risk a glance over my shoulder, peering through the rain as a pair of distant headlights flash through the storm.
There’s no time.
I pick up speed, shoving wet hair out of my face as I push my body harder, risking stability in exchange for lengthening my strides. My longer legs soon eat up the ground between us and I’m close enough to throw myself forward, practically tackling her to the ground.
She cries out as I catch her.
I tuck her against my chest and roll over as we fall so her head doesn’t hit the ground, but by the time we stop movingwe’re both breathing hard and I’ve got her half-pinned beneath me. Rainwater drips from my face to hers, and she blinks up at me in the ghostly light, a flare of some unfathomable emotion flashing in her eyes. For a moment I nearly forget myself. Suddenly we’re just two people alone in the dusk, and I can feel every inch of her under my body.
I nearly lose focus.
She recovers before I do, her eyes shuttering as she pushes uselessly at my chest. “Let me go—”
“No.”
“James—”
“Listen to me,” I say, raising my voice as a roll of thunder breaks across the sky. “There’s no point in running. They’re going to shoot you just to take you out, and then they’ll heal you and dump you right back in prison—”
“I’m not going back to prison—”
“You keep saying that like you can make it true. I realize there are some philosophical differences between us, but where I come from, you don’t get a paycheck and treat when you kill people. You go to jail.”
“Then why aren’t you in jail?” she argues. “You kill people all the time.”
I open my mouth, then close it.
“You’re a hypocrite,” she says. “You’re all hypocrites.”
“That’s not”—I frown—“I’m a soldier—”
“So am I,” she hits back.
