Chapter 4

Ana

I take one glance at the door that my mother is banging so insistently on—knowing immediately that there is nothing I could say to her right now that would make her understand me.

Instead, I give Cas a wolfish grin.

“Fuck it, let’s go.”

We make our escape through the window. The window. Oh, how I’ve missed Cas.

My life has been missing the kind of adrenaline rush that comes from being with Caspian Andreas for three unbearably long years.

Or maybe it was simply that I wasn’t even alive.

Cas was dead for three years, and so was I.

It’s all so clear now.

I can hear mama screaming my name—she must know that something has gone terribly wrong, but I laugh raucously in response.

Cas kisses my hand as he helps me out the window, and then we’re gone, gone, gone.

I allow him to lead me full-pelt down the sidewalk. In any other situation, a young woman in a bejeweled wedding dress and a man dressed all in black as if he were heading for a funeral—something I’ll be sure to ask Cas about when I’m not running in stiletto heels—would draw several pairs of curious eyes.

But this is New England. They care more about the centerpieces here.

Just when I feel as if my lungs may burst, or that I might break my ankle in my heels—Cas takes me around a corner where a car lies, waiting.

It’s no ’69 Spider, but it’s pretty fucking close. It’s a beautiful car.

“Your chariot awaits, my lady,” Cas says, sweeping into a bow as he opens the passenger door for me.

“Where—” I pant, struggling to get my breath back before speaking, “where did you get an Austin-Healey Sprite?”

Cas laughs as he gets into the driver’s seat and turns the key in the ignition. The engine roars to life as if it is just as happy about our escape as we are.

“I’d say fasten your seatbelt, but the Mark II has none,” he says.

I roll my eyes.

“I’ve just done the most dangerous thing of my life,” I tell him. “Seatbelts are irrelevant now. But seriously, Cas…where’d you get the car?”

“I spent the entire flight trying to locate the perfect getaway car. You won’t believe how much this baby cost me.”

“But let me guess, it was worth it, right?”

Cas pulls one hand away from the steering wheel to wrap his arm around me. I happily nestle against it.

“Sometimes the corniest lines are the truest ones, cuore mio.”

I almost melt at those words—just as I did back in the church.

I thought I was never going to hear those words again.

“Yuri will have well and truly knocked that door down by now,” Cas murmurs.

“Oh, definitely. Hope it falls on him.”

There’s a sharpness to my words that Cas notices immediately, but doesn’t comment on. I pray to God that he will still love me after he truly realizes what kind of person I’ve become.

He doesn’t know that I had planned to die at my own wedding. And I don’t think I ever want him to.

No, I’ll take that to my grave.

And yet, I know that he will see through my thoroughly hardened shell and wish to know what made me that way.

I run my hands up and down my arms, suddenly acutely aware of the not-yet-healed bruises littering my skin, barely concealed by the lace. He’ll want to know about them when he sees them.

And he deserves to know. He literally took three bullets for me.

My heart is suddenly overwrought with emotion as I look at the man I love—the man I have loved for the past eight years of my life.

“You cold, Ana?” Cas suddenly speaks, turning on the heater as he asks the question.

With the sun slowly setting, I guess I could blame my nervous shaking on that. But I don’t want to lie.

“I’m not cold,” I reply, giving Cas a small smile. “I’m just—I’m just so relieved. And I don’t even think I’m sure yet that all of this isn’t a dream meant to torture me and that I won’t wake up and that bastard Yuri will have his hands on me and—”

“Shhh, shhh, shhh,” Cas interrupts soothingly.

He pinches me, and I recoil in surprise.

“Ow!” I complain, frowning at him. “What was that for?”

He laughs, the sound lost to the wind whipping against our faces as he drives onto the interstate and picks up speed.

“They do say if you can feel pain then you’re not dreaming, my love.”

Well, if we’re sticking to that logic, then Cas is free to hurt me for the rest of my life.

There’s silence in the car for a few minutes—but it’s a peaceful, contented silence. As if, finally, the stars have aligned and all is right with the world.

“I can’t believe we’re really doing this, Cas. I can’t believe it,” I eventually murmur, barely audible against the roar of the Austin-Healey’s engine.

Cas turns his head from the road momentarily to smile warmly at me.

Oh, how I’ve missed those eyes of his. Olive green and earthy—as if every forest, field and living thing are trapped inside. Well, I suppose Caspian Andreas truly is my entire world; so it makes sense for his eyes to contain it.

The dying sun is in his hair—catching the sandy blonde strands and setting them on golden fire.

Along with his tanned skin, he looks like a god. He looks invincible.

I don’t remember him looking quite so strong.

Cas quirks an eyebrow at me questioningly.

“You’re staring, Ana. What are you thinking?”

“That you were much more—I don’t know—elvish, before.”

Cas bursts out laughing.

“And what do you mean by that? Is that a good or a bad thing?”

I giggle.

“A good thing, I swear. You were thinner and more boyish, before. I guess back then I thought you would always look like that. But now…”

“But now?”

I give him the same up-and-down look that he used to eye me up back in the church. He definitely appreciates it.

“Now you look like a man.”

Cas grins.

“All the better to steal you away, then. Glad to put all these hard-won muscles to good use!”

“As if you used them at all, Mr. Andreas. I was definitely capable of escaping out of that window all by myself.”

He gives me a sidelong glance, paired with a wicked smile, and I feel my insides heat up.

“You seemed to rather enjoy being pinned to the door, Miss Rachmanoff.”

If my insides were hot before, they’re on fire now.

But I need to cool down.

There are really some very important matters that need to be discussed before anything physical can happen. It’s important that Cas and I are on the same page—we always were before, after all. We owe it to ourselves to clear the air.

But at least for a few more minutes, I decide to keep those thoughts to myself. I tilt my head up into the setting sun, allow Cas to blare out some classic rock on the radio, and simply absorb a moment that—I can say with some certainty—I would die for.