Chapter 18

Kristen

I can’t believe it.

I know I don’t seem like the type, but this is something I’d been dreaming about for a long time.

Okay, so maybe I didn’t imagine that it would happen exactly like this.

I mean, I don’t imagine that any little girl dreams of hearing the words ‘I love you’ after being roofied, kidnapped, auctioned, and then pushed to remove a bullet using kitchen equipment and a first-aid box.

Leo pulls me into his arms, and I rest my head on his chest as he pulls a blanket from the back of the couch. The air is cooling against our sweat-drenched skin, and I can hear his heart hammering behind his rib cage as we catch our breath.

He loves me.

We sit in silence, the desperate, whispered confessions sitting comfortably in the air between us. I know Leo probably also needs to process what just happened and how he feels.

I definitely need to take a few seconds to wrap my head around it all.

I shut my eyes, listening to Leo’s breathing.

I don’t know what is fucking me more: The fact that Leo told me he loves me or the fact that I believe him when he said it.

I’ve had guys tell me they loved me before. But their words were always half-slurred, mostly insincere, and forgotten in the morning.

Leo is chillingly sober, deadly serious, and I doubt that this will be a night that either of us will ever forget.

It doesn’t matter that this isn’t the way that I’d dreamed of falling in love. Convention is overrated—following convention just leads to wedding where both the bride and groom bail out before the guests have even taken their seats.

I’ve never been a girl for convention.

Falling in love with Leo just feels totally natural.

It just feels right.

I’ve not known him for very long, but it’s been a whirlwind from the moment our eyes met when Oberon Lawson toasted the happy couple. The sparks that I felt when he first looked me have given me new life—I don’t have to force myself to be a party girl around him. I can be myself.

I can laugh. I can cry. I can curse him out with all the best swear words I know, and it’s okay, because he’ll be able to take it and dish it out right back.

And it’s totally crazy, but I feel like right here—naked, in Leo’s arms as we drift through a post-orgasm haze—is exactly where I’m meant to be. I’d like to be here again, if I could.

“Are you okay?” Leo asks eventually.

He must know that that was my first time, and despite how gruff and tough he is, I know he really does respect me and care for me, and I know he’d never hurt me.

Unless I asked him nicely, of course.

“Yeah.” I nod. “I’m alright. I’m okay.”

It definitely helped being able to go at my own pace at first. Riding him felt so good—and he let me take it slow first as I got used to how fucking big he is.

“I just can’t help myself around you—”

I lean up to kiss Leo, silencing his words before he can get a chance to apologize again. As I told him after our impromptu shower—or tried to tell him—it doesn’t matter if he can’t help himself, because I know if I ever changed my mind, then he’d listen to me and stop.

“Don’t. Don’t start that again, Leo.”

“I know.”

“Exactly.” I smile at him, and my lips brush over his cheek as I kiss him gently there, too. “I trust you. I wanted this, and I want you. Don’t question it.”

Leo pulls me tighter against his chest. I bury my face into his neck.

For a second, he winces as he stretches and moves the bullet hole the barest fraction of an inch. But then, Leo puts that same mask of composure over his face and holds me close.

After the day I’ve had, I can confidently say that I’ve never felt safer than I do right now.

“Are the people who shot you going to come back?”

“They shouldn’t. They won’t come here, anyway. Benefits of being a nobody, I guess—no one knows where I live.”

That’s good to hear. A minor relief. But we can’t stay cooped up in this house forever, even if Netflix does update its movie selection every month.

“Do you know who was behind it?”

“I’ve got too many enemies to be sure. Or I might not have even been the target at all…”

“What do you mean?”

“A…a friend of mine. He was killed. And we were on the job for Lawson.” Leo sighs. “It wouldn’t surprise me if someone was gunning for Lawson himself... I’m no one special.”

Somehow, the news doesn’t really soothe me, and I look out over the night sky beyond the window.

“You’re special to me…” I say absentmindedly, and Leo chuckles.

“Oh, and I’ll be special to your family, once they realize you’re not where you should be, and since everyone at the wedding saw you last when you were with me.”

I hadn’t even thought about that.

Fuck, what is my dad going to do when he realizes?

His possible reactions run through my mind—he might assume I’m just at a wild party, or he might be genuinely worried for me. Would he put out an appeal and offer a reward for my return? Maybe he’d head up a search party…

But thinking about my dad trying to look for me raises a new question that I hadn’t considered before.

Do I even want to be found?

I sit up from Leo’s chest, pulling myself out of his arms and looking out over the garden as I think. Leo quickly—as quick as he can, with his stitches—sits up beside me, putting his hand on my thigh and looking at me in concern.

“Kristen? What’s wrong?”

I turn around to look at him, staring into Leo’s dark eyes for a moment.

“Run away with me.”

“What?” Leo looks at me in confusion. He can’t quite believe what I just said.

I know it’s a risk—I know it sounds really fucking crazy. My track record of gambling has never been great, and usually, risks don’t ever work out in my favor.

But I swear, this time it’s different.

This time, I know I’m going to win big.

“You heard me. Run away with me.”

“Can we do that?”

“Of course, we can,” I say with a laugh. “Why couldn’t we? We’ve got your bike, and my family has money—”

“I’m not taking your dad’s money.”

“Then we’ll figure out how to get cash some other way. I’ll work as a waitress, and you can find a job in a supermarket.”

Leo snorts at the idea. I can’t imagine him wearing a smock and scanning groceries, either, but I’m just spit-balling right now.

“If it’s not safe, we don’t have to stay here. We can go anywhere we want.”

“I could sell my house…” Leo nods, the amused smirk in his face slowly vanishing as his eyes drift off to think about the possibilities. “Put the important stuff in storage under a fake name…I’d leave all this behind in a heartbeat.”

“We’d be free, Leo. You and me and the open road.”

“If I’ve got you and the open road, I don’t need a house,” he muses, looking at me. “But…don’t you want more than that, Kristen? You’re not exactly, ah…”

I smile at him, narrowing my eyes as he tries to be tactful.

“Low maintenance,” I finish for him. “I’ll manage. I’ve always wanted to see how the other half lives, you know. Could be fun.”

Leo captures my hands with his, and he holds my fingers to his chest so that I can feel the pounding of his heart through his sternum.

“I’ll be at home wherever I’m with you. Wherever we are.”

I feel my heart swell, and I lean in. We rest our foreheads against each other, and I shut my eyes as the fantasy runs away with us.

“But Kristen…are you sure you want to do this?”

“Why wouldn’t I be sure?”

“Because you’d have to leave everything behind. You wouldn’t be able to have all the comforts of home that you deserve…there’s a chance you might not see your family or your friends again for a long time.”

I lift my head and hold Leo’s cheek in my hand. He leans into the touch.

“I don’t need them. They all think I’m just some dumb party girl, and I’m sick of playing that role. I want to be with you, I want to be myself—whoever that is, wherever the road takes us.”

Leo smiles, and I swear I watch a weight lift off his shoulders.

“If you’re sure about this, then I need to show you something.”

“What?”

“You’ll see.”

He pushes off the sofa and unsteadily rises to his feet. I’m by his side in an instant, helping him and letting him lead me from the sofa towards the door under the staircase.

Leo retrieves the keys and opens the door.

“Oh, wow…”