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He released me, the sadness of his smile shredding the final pieces of my heart. He turned, and I waited to be swept away, but instead he took a single step, pausing to watch MacAlister fighting for his final breaths.
Seconds. We had seconds.
There was so much I needed to say to him.
“My nights still belong to you,” I blurted out. That would always be true, bargain or no. No matter how many I had left. I swallowed. “I belong to you.”
His eyes closed for a second, momentarily shutting out the man dying at his feet. He reached into his jacket, the fingers of his other hand twitching like he couldn’t quite stomach sending me away. The smirk he flashed didn’t reach his eyes. “Always have. Always will, princess.”
His words pierced me as he pulled a gun from his holster. I blinked as he lifted it, realizing a moment too late what was happening. His fingers snapped, but I lunged as he pulled the trigger, the world sweeping away beneath me as Lach shot MacAlister in the head—taking the kill shot.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Darkness greeted me first. I fought the urge to dissolve into it, to let it swallow me whole. It couldn’t be worse than the agony of facing what Lach had done. But before I could surrender to the shadows, strips of green neon hummed to life, racing to outline the walls of a garage and illuminating a sleek black SUV, its hood emblazoned with Sentinel. I stared around me, my brain kicking on with the lights.
He had sacrificed himself for me. It felt like my chest was caving in, collapsing on the empty space left behind where he’d been ripped from me. Another bleeding wound I couldn’t staunch.
The pain was too much, too heavy to bear. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think.
“Focus.” The word echoed back at me, summoning his instructions.
One step. Just one. I took it. Then another until I reached the SUV. I fumbled for the door handle. It unlocked automatically, and I climbed in, gripping the steering wheel. I rested my forehead on it and tried to remember how to breathe. But all I saw when I closed my eyes was the grim determination on his face as he killed MacAlister. As he took the final kill shot, claimed my fate, gave up everything—his family, his court, his life—to save me.
And I would not sit here while he died for me.
I would not just give up.
Sitting up, I dashed my tears with the back of my hand and reached for the glove box. It fell open to reveal a black leather bag. I unzipped it to find rolls of money, a handful of papers, and a few passports, each labeled for different countries—and at the bottom of the bag: an old Nokia phone.
He’d given me instructions. I only had to follow them. I only had to do the next thing he’d put in front of me. But I couldn’t, not with emotions bottlenecking in my throat. So, I screamed.
It tore out of me, clawing and primal and raw. And when I finally pried my white knuckles from the wheel, my throat ravaged, I went back to work. I found the power cable and plugged the phone in, knowing it wouldn’t charge until I opened that garage door and drove out of New Orleans.
Until I left this city.
Until I left him.
Maybe I would always belong to him, but I wanted to be with him more.
But he had freed me in those final moments so the bargain wouldn’t fester between us as he ran from the Wild Hunt, not me. He’d done so instinctively, acting compulsively, as though he had always had this plan in place. Looking around me at the secret, outfitted garage, I realized that he had. That he had known one day he might have to run. But instead of him nipping to this car and his money and passports and that help waiting on the other end of a single call, instead of choosing to flee before the Hunt tracked him down, he’d sent me. Maybe because he knew Bain would come for me when he discovered MacAlister’s failure. Maybe because that’s what he’d promised he would do.
Protect me.
I gripped the wheel, my eyes focusing on my ring. On proof that I had survived again, but only because he would not. On the linchpin of our bargain. This stupid ring that he somehow knew I would never give to him willingly, especially after he’d refused it first. After he’d told me that it was worthless. That its only value lay in what it meant to me, so I would never think of offering it again. Such a simple, clever trick. Something howled inside me to take it off, unable to stomach the sight of it. Because it no longer meant I’d survived.
It carried the weight of loss. It always had, but I’d chosen the easier story to swallow. I didn’t remember my parents, so maybe it had been easier to believe it was so simple. Black or white. The past or the future. But now I knew exactly what I’d forfeited. The loss of the life I’d only tasted, the family I had glimpsed, the man who might have very well always known what I needed—because he needed it, too.
It was all gone, and I’d vowed to wear this ring like a scar for the rest of my life.
I wanted to crumble into my grief, but I didn’t have time to break down. That would come later. And suddenly, I was grateful for all of those double shifts, for the chaotic pace of Gage Memorial. I ignored the twinge of sorrow I felt at leaving it all behind. But my job had taught me to focus and follow instructions, so I knew what I had to do next.
I fumbled in the dark until I found a garage-door remote in a small overhead compartment. My pulse shot up as the door rose, revealing a worn-down New Orleans street. Judging by the plants growing in the cracked brick of nearby buildings, it was a long-abandoned industrial district. I had no idea where I was. I just had to follow the signs out of town, make that call, and convince the person on the other end to point me in the right direction—the only direction I was willing to go.
The one that took me back to Lach, because if he thought I was going to leave him to run, to die…I sensed another argument in our future.
Our future.
A future I was not willing to give up on.