I don’t feel shocked or horrified at his confession, which is both raw and vulnerable. And brave, I think. I matter to him or he wouldn’t have dared travel this conversational path. I step into him, his hard body aligned with mine, and press my hands to the hard wall of his chest. He is warm. The night is cold. My life was cold without him. “Thank you for your honesty. And tell me when, and if, you’re ever ready. I won’t listen to anyone else. What you choose to say is all that matters to me.” I press to my toes to kiss his cheek.
He scoops up my hair with his fingers, and right there, in front of my stepfather’s house, kisses me with the kind of passion that wets a girl between the legs, and has her nipples puckering and tingling.
I’d assumed the best of him that night, and every day forward, at least until Kasey died. Now Luke believes I see nothing but the worst of him. So, while he says he’s going nowhere again, I say differently. As we exit the hotel into a chilly night, I fear that trust, or rather our lack of trust, now defines us.
And yet, it doesn’t stop him from aspiring, and succeeding, in his recent effort to be my hero. He swooped into my life again, to save me from a similar death to that of Jake. Even now, as we exit the hotel, I don’t miss the way he places his body on the side of the road, sandwiching me between him and the wall, sheltering me—ensuring any attack finds him, not me. I never doubted this man’s willingness to die for me or even for my brother. I don’t know why I questioned anything about the day Kasey died, or why Luke had to kill him. It was grief, I think. Just the freakout mode, of knowing my brother was no longer on this Earth. But if I’m honest, just the idea of Kasey dying at Luke’s hand still destroys me, even if logically I know he had no choice but to do what he did.
I told him I don’t know how to fix us, and I don’t.
The problem is that he doesn’t know how to fix us, either.
And no one else can do the fixing for us.
For the moment, I settle on scanning our surroundings and staying alive so we get the chance to try.
Chapter Four
Luke
Thanks to the Colorado mountain stream, the wind is an erratic bitch with mood swings, punishing everything in its path, including me and Ana. Compliments of my shared earbuds, Blake barks out commands in both our ears: left at one street, right at another, left, right. Stop. Stop now. Run East! Run now!
Neither of us ask any questions. We run and keep running, with Blake back to spitting out commands. Our mad rush ends in a parking lot that’s too empty to offer anywhere near a comfortable level of coverage. For now, our best shot at safety is to hunker down at the butt end of an old Buick, but any safety offered is a façade.
“Find a car and get the hell out of there,” Blake orders. “Call me when you get to the safe house.”
“Copy that, boss,” I say, and when he disconnects, I’m already glancing at Ana and patting the rear of the Buick.
She offers an approving nod and sixty seconds later, we’re sealed inside the four-door green beast of a car. From there, it takes me another thirty seconds to hotwire the ignition, the clunky chug of the engine far from encouraging.
“She’s not going to be fast,” I say, “but at least she’s a tank if we need to roll over an asshole or two.” I hand my phone off to Ana. “The address for the safe house is in my text messages with Blake.”
Ana tabs through my phone and quickly offers directions. “211 Monroe Street,” she says, and then adds, “If I’m correct, this isn’t far from that Italian place we used to love.”
I’m instantly reminded of a night not long before that dreaded mission with Kasey when Ana and I had walked down a cozy Cherry Creek sidewalk, her arm linked with mine, her chin tilted upward as she’d offered me a sweet smile. It was a calmer time. We’d been happy together. I’d been happy in a way I’d once thought only flying could make me. Now I’m not. And she’s not.
It sends me into a flashback yet again, this time Kasey’s funeral, where the smile on her mouth and in her eyes turned to hate, a memory that stabs at my heart, a blade that just won’t stop coming. My jaw clenches, anything I might have to say about the past lost in the bloodbath that was our ending. I don’t need to go there right now, I tell myself, and yet, as I eye the rearview mirror, finding no cars behind me, the gleam of headlights transports me to a memory from one month after I met Ana—dinner at her stepfather’s place.