Now it’s my turn to shake my head. “Ozzie, I never said I love you.”
“Your actions say it. Would you be crying and upset about the chaos you think you’ve caused if you didn’t love me? Would you be this out of sorts and feeling irrationally guilty about lying to my family if you didn’t love me?”
“I care about you. So much. So much that I have to go. Don’t you get it?”
He cups my face and kisses my cheek, then my forehead. “No. I don’t get it. I guess I am an idiot because I will not leave you. Call me a sap, but you don’t leave the people you love behind, even out of some misplaced sense of duty to protect them. Do you think I’m unrealistic? Well, you’re living in a constant state of fight or flight. And I got news for you…life is not an action movie. In real life, we stick by the people we love when things get difficult. Maybe things will get difficult, and maybe they won’t. But you’re not going to get away from me. Or from my sisters or my mom. Maybe not even Bryan. Do you understand now?”
Whenever Ozzie underlines the concept of not leaving people we love behind, I can only think about Khaz.
“I…” My words come out in choked sobs as I try to hold back my emotions. “I let Khaz help me…I let him get involved, and he’s dead. He was my person, and now he’s dead because of me.”
My eyesight goes blurry as I let the tears come. Khaz sacrificed himself for me. The big dummy. And it was all my fault.
“Let it go, Mila.”
“I’m not Mila.”
“Yes, you are, and you can let it all out. You’re safe with me.”
Something solid and thick moves under my legs and supports my back, and the next thing I know, I’m sitting across Ozzie’s lap.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t want anyone to seat me on their lap. But Ozzie…he’s so big and bear-like, and he feels so good with his arms wrapped around me and pulling my side against his big torso that I give in.
I don’t know how long we stay like this, with him holding me tight against him while I weep into his shirt.
He’s got me in quite a pickle. My instinct is to run, yet I can’t shake how right it feels to let Ozzie help me.
“I have to go and tell your family the truth. I can’t stay here a minute longer, upholding this lie.”
Ozzie shakes his head fiercely and cups my face again. “No. I’ll do it.”
“No.”
“Mila.”
“Ozzie.”
“Let me do it.”
“It’s my lie.”
“The fiancée thing was my idea.”
I squint up at him, and he brushes the hair out of my eyes, and I think.
Grunting, I finally cave. “Fine. We do it together.”
He nods, helps me to my feet, and kisses me on the nose. “We tell them together.”
We leave the pool house and enter the main house through the patio doors. We find everyone tidying up from dinner; the conversation is light but muted. None of the hilarity of the usual post-meal clean-up so far in the Gwynn home.
Tabitha stops mid-sentence when she sees us enter. Emmeline turns to us, an expectant look on her face but not demanding.
“Everything okay?” Emmeline asks.
Ozzie and I exchange a look. “Not exactly,” I start.
“But,” Ozzie says, showing his palms to the room full of wide, wary eyes, “everything will be okay.”
Emmeline’s hand that holds a towel goes to her chest. “Oh gosh. Are you two breaking up? Did you have a fight?” The poor woman looks on the verge of total heartbreak, and I hate that I made her worry like that. Then, I remind myself: she’s going to be a lot more heartbroken when she finds out this has all been a ruse on top of a scheme to hide the fact that I’m a cold-blooded killer hiding from the mafia.
Right. That.
“No,” I start, swallowing down the dread climbing up my throat. “But you and Carl might want to sit down.”