No dark shadow fleeing over a fence to haunt my dreams. I don’t know if that limp pile on the rooftop is dead or only dying, but I feel completely, totally confident that I willneversee him again.
Loud, ugly sobs tear through me, my tears joining the blood on her shirt, but Christine never wavers. Decades-old terror finally drains from my muscles until I’m too tired to cry anymore.
Then there’s just her fingers sliding through my hair, and her low, quiet purr steadying me.
“Tell me what you need, baby,” she whispers. “Anything.”
I take a shuddering, sniffling breath, leaning heavily against her chest, since I know it’s the last time I’m going to do so.
The words catch painfully in my throat like they’re barbed, but it’s the only thing I’m confident of.
“I need to gohome.”
CHAPTER
FORTY
MYLO
The landscape sprawlingbelow the private jet shifts from ocean to coastline to mountains to desert to plains.
The plane belongs to Christine’s friend Morgan, apparently.
I hardly remember any of how I got on it—just Christine taking charge, weaving some convincing cover story to placate Lana’s worried voice on the phone.
There are flashes of being in the shower—there’s one on the plane, somehow—then wrapped in clean clothes.Myclean clothes, fetched from my hotel room along with the rest of my belongings, probably by Christine’s PA.
Then I’m sat in one of the plane’s leather seats, and a warm, lingering kiss brushes my forehead.
Christine, I realize—but only as she disappears from the plane, and the door shuts behind her.
The pilot, Cassandra, comes out soon after to introduce herself. She’s a Black beta woman sporting close-cropped hair, a smart navy pantsuit, and a calm, grounding aura that almosthides a sharp edge of ambition. No wonder she runs with female alphas.
She asks me where I want to go.
I tell her.
Then she draws up the flight plan, and we’re in the air.
I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to Haley or Bella. Or Gabriel, or Andy, or any of the other members of the crew that now feel like family.
Maybe it’s better that way.
I wouldn’t have to promise that I’ll see them again, that we’ll work together again, when I know that we won’t.
When I know that life is over for me.
While on the jet, time seems both frozen and to happen all at once. When the plane touches down, I expect to be at the same city airport where I bought my ticket to LA all those years ago.
But instead, I emerge amongst familiar fields on a small private airfield only a few miles from the address I gave Cassandra.
She sends me off with well wishes and directions to find my driver.
The black SUV screams luxury, but at least it’s not a limo.
I mumble the address again, and the syllables so automatic I hardly register them.
Then, all of a sudden, I’m standing outside my childhood home. Once again, time warps strangely around me. The little brick house with cream siding looks almost exactly the same as it did when I left. The Japanese maple tree in the front yard is a couple feet taller. The white picket fence has a fresh coat of paint. The front flower bed has mums instead of pansies, but it’s still tidily laid out.
