Chapter Twenty-Three

Colleen

 

“Okay,” Gabriel says, with a calm I find incredible. Bullets thud into the walls outside the bathroom, so loud I can barely hear myself think, and here he is, talking to me as though we’re taking a gentle stroll. Holding the door with one hand, he ducks down low and waves me over. “Come here. Stay behind me.”

 

I crawl across the floor and hug up close to him, his body feeling safe and secure against me despite the madness outside. Despite everything, I find myself praying that Alma and Father are okay. They should be, since the Irish are trained to get them out of danger as soon as something bad happens. But I can’t think about that right now, I realize. This is it, a pivotal moment in my life; I have to seize this opportunity and take the chance.

 

“I’m sorry I left you,” I whisper urgently, grabbing onto Gabriel’s arm.

 

“Don’t be,” he whispers back, just as urgently. “I only want you, Colleen. It’s just me and you now, eh? I don’t give a shit about anything—” He ducks down low when a bullet smashes into the wall just outside, so loud it hurts my ears. “Just wait. Just be patient. We’ll be out of here soon, I promise. I fucking love you.” He turns his face; I meet him, kissing him with so much passion that, for a few long moments, I forget the hellfire outside.

 

“I love you too!” I gasp. “I love you so much!”

 

“Marry me!” he says. “What better time to ask you, eh? Marry me, Colleen.”

 

“Yes!” I cry, kissing him again. “Yes! Yes!”

 

Tears slide down my cheeks. It’s as though everything that has happened tonight comes out right then, the tears stinging my eyes, making my whole body tremble. I grab even harder onto his arm and wipe my tears on his shirt.

 

“Okay, are you ready?” he asks, taking out his pistol and letting go of the door. It swings back on its one remaining hinge. The fight has moved out to the ballroom now, the gunfire still loud but not as close.

 

“Yes,” I say, though I’m not sure if I am. What I am sure about is that I’ll never be sure, though, so there’s no other option.

 

“Stay at my side the whole time. Go where I go. Do as I say. We need to be quick about this. All right? One, two, three …”

 

He leaps up, clasping my hand and dragging my behind him at first. This dress wasn’t made for running, but somehow I manage it. With close, quick steps I keep pace with him. We run down the hallway, past several corpses, and then into the ballroom, which is so chaotic I can barely make anything out. I search the corpses and the men with guns but I don’t see Father or Alma, which brings me some measure of comfort, even if I don’t want to admit it. Gabriel leads me around the edge of the ballroom, hugging close to the wall, and then around a corner to the main entrance. Together, we run toward it; together, we run toward freedom.

 

“Stop!” Lorenzo steps from the side of the entrance, from the shadows. He’s bleeding from a wound in his shoulder. He raises his gun; Gabriel leaps in front of me and, as quick as a bolt of lightning, fires a shot. It cuts right through the middle of Lorenzo’s forehead and he collapses to the floor.

 

“Okay,” Gabriel says, completely unfazed. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

 

He takes me outside and darts to the left, to the small wooded area that borders the main road. I stop at the edge of the woods and glance back, spotting Alma and Father climbing into the limousine. Gabriel pulls on my hand but I need to see if they’ll wait; if they care that I might be in there, bleeding or dead, or if they’ll just run away … the limo’s wheels screech loudly as it pulls out of the parking space and barrels toward the exit gates. It smashes right through them and then veers wildly around the corner. They don’t stop, they don’t look back; they don’t care.

 

“Okay,” I whisper, wiping my eyes. “Let’s go.”

 

We run through the sleety, snowy woods and emerge on the other side of the road to an unmarked car, presumably Gabriel’s getaway car. It’s jet-black and difficult to see in the darkness with its tinted windows. Gabriel opens the door for me and then slides across the hood and jumps into the driver’s seat.

 

He turns to me with a rueful grin. “Buckle up, princess. You know I’m all about safety.”

 

We drive through the night, Gabriel leading us to the interstate. A duffle bag full of cash sits on the back seat, more money than I’ve ever seen; it must be nearly a million, so many bills stacked up like that, spilling out of the top. More cash rests in the footwell, alongside a painting covered in a protective layer of cardboard.

 

“What is that?” I ask after a while, when the ability to talk calmly finally returns to me.

 

“It’s worth two million,” he tells me. “I took it from Lorenzo’s study. I guess he won’t be needing it now anyway.”

 

“No,” I whisper. “I guess not.”

 

I rest my head against the glass and stare out at the blackness of the night, completely dark except for the other cars and the highway lights. We drive for a long, long time, until the sun rises and we’re no longer in New York or near New York. We cross state lines and then just keep on going. At some point I fall asleep, which is a miracle in itself. I wake up with Gabriel handing me a bottle of water.

 

“Wash your face and your hands with this,” he tells me. “We can’t have some civilian seeing all that blood and calling the cops.”

 

He hands me a bunch of paper towels and then leans against the car, waiting. He’s already cleaned himself up and changed out of his clothes. I guess he must’ve packed clean clothes in anticipation of rescuing me … rescuing me. I almost giggle at the idea, since it’s so different to how all of this started. He was the one I needed rescuing from. We’re sitting in the parking lot of a motel, right down near the end, opposite an empty swimming pool with blue tarpaulin pulled taut across it. The only other people in the lot are a couple going toward the main desk and a few kids kicking a soccer ball around.

 

I wash myself as best I can with the towels and the water, and then, together, we walk to our motel room. Gabriel locks the door behind us and then nods to the bed, where he’s laid out some clean clothes for me.

 

“You can shower and change,” he tells me. “I’ll be right out here.”

 

I go quickly to the shower, grateful for the chance to wash the dirt from last night from me. The water is hot and refreshing. I take a long shower, scrubbing myself longer after the water swirling down the plughole has turned from red to clear, and then I step out and wipe the steam from the mirror, looking at myself. I don’t look panicked, like I expected. I just look tired: tired and calm. I emerge from the shower wrapped in a towel, and then Gabriel goes into the bathroom and takes a shower of his own.

 

When he emerges in his towel, I’m lying in bed, knees drawn up to my chest, exhausted but unable to sleep. Gabriel smiles at me and pulls up a chair next to the bed. He sits down, his glistening muscles looking even tighter and bigger with beads of water sliding down them. I look him up and down, from his bare feet to his legs to his naked torso, and finally, into his eyes.

 

“I thought you’d be asleep,” he says, offering me his hand.

 

I take it, pressing my cheek against the back of it. “I’m just glad we’re together,” I tell him. “I don’t know—I’m just glad it’s all over. But …”

 

“What is it?” he urges, when I hesitate.

 

“Did you mean what you said about marrying me?”

 

He laughs and takes his hand away from me. For a crazy second I think he might be laughing at me, but then he goes to the duffle bag in the corner of the room, slides his hand through the piles of cash, and returns to me with a jewelry box. He opens it to show me a big, shining diamond ring.

 

“I picked this out the day after I visited you that night, when I threw those stones at your window. I just hope it fits.”

 

I offer him my hand, heart thumping more than it did back at the hotel, thumping right into the back of my throat. When he slides the ring onto me, it’s like the cool metal rejuvenates me somehow. It fits snugly. I clasp my hand, pressing the metal against my palm.

 

“It’s perfect,” I say.

 

He grins. “There room on there for me?”

 

“Of course there is.”

 

I move aside and he climbs onto the bed in his towel, hugging me close to him, his arms feeling so safe around me that I almost cry again. Despite all the madness, this is the safest I’ve ever felt. A strange truth, but a truth all the same. We hold each other like that until people in the adjacent rooms start to wake up and go about their days; alarms blare and glasses clink; voices get louder and outside cars pull into and out of the lot.

 

“Are you asleep?” I whisper, wondering if the feelings that are rising up within me make me a crazy lady. I shouldn’t be feeling like this now—no, I stop myself. It’s time I stopped worrying about what I am supposed to feel and just started letting myself feel.

 

“No,” he replies.

 

He must sense something in me because he rolls over, lets the towel drop away, and then brings his hand to my breast, sliding under my shirt and cupping it softly. He turns his face to mine with an expression that breaks my heart … and then fuses it back together when he kisses me, hard, on the lips. I kiss him even harder, breathing in deeply: breathing in the long-awaited pleasure. Our tongues dance and then he tears at my pants, rips them and my panties off of me and rolls over, holding his body above mine.

 

I open my legs and clasp his face in my hands, kissing him over and over as he slides his cock inside of me. There is no pain this time, no discomfort of any sort, just the ecstasy of finally being with the man I love, the man I have dreamt about ever since we were wrenched away from each other. His cock slides deep, deep, deep … and I sing a song of pleasure, my moans getting louder as he thrusts into me. He does not fuck me this time; neither do we make love. It’s something else, something more.

 

He thrusts into me so deeply now that I cannot hold it any longer. I squeeze my thighs around his massive cock—his cock touching every part of me—and then bite down on his shoulder as the orgasm wrenches through me, tearing me up, twisting me all over the place. I tilt my hips and sit down on him, again and again, as he smooths one hand over my breasts and uses the other to hold himself up.

 

“I love you,” I whisper-moan, right into his ear. “I—ah, oh, baby. I love you.”

 

The orgasm passes like a breath of wind, leaving me open to another gust. We fall into the lovemaking then, both of us utterly consumed with it.

 

The outside doesn’t exist anymore.