I was underwater. My ears felt full, and there was a constant whirring noise like a broken washing machine. But I couldn’t figure out how I’d gotten there or how to get out. Everything was black, and it took me a few seconds to realize it was because my eyes were closed. Then, I heard a bang.

It was high-pitched, metallic, but far away. By the time the sound made it to me, it was watery and distorted, the sound waves lost to the waves of the water all around me.

“Jack?”

Unlike the other noise, her voice came through crystal clear. She was sitting right next to me, talking into my ear. I felt a tingle move down my arm and knew it was her finger.

Her.

I tried hard to focus on who her was.

“Jack, can you hear me?”

A finger stroked the stubble from my ear to the point of my chin. It left me feeling warm, a tingle trailing behind it. Mia, of course. I tried to smile, but I didn’t know if I could. My body felt far away, too. My limbs were heavy, and my eyes stayed closed no matter how hard I tried to open them. What had happened to me? Where was I?

Then, the ghost of a memory flitted around the edges of my muddled mind. Spinning. A scream.

My eyes bolted open and then squinted hard against the onslaught of full sunshine. Tears gathered in the corners of my eyes and rolled down my cheeks as my pupils adjusted.

“Jack?” Mia asked, a newfound excitement in her voice. “Are you awake? Are you okay?”

“A car accident,” I mumbled, still trying to make sense of everything. I only knew we’d been in an accident. If so, where were we now? Was I dead? I’d never had a strong opinion on the topic of the afterlife, but I thought it would be better than this—head fuzzy, eyes stinging, neck sore. Unless, of course, I was in the other place.

“You’re okay,” Mia said, comforting herself as much as me. “You’re fine. We are both fine.”

I blinked hard a few times until the faux wood dash of a car came into view. Then, the world beyond. Thick trees with orange and brown leaves running down either side of an open stretch of highway. I looked over and saw Mia, hair still braided to one side, hands on the wheel at ten and two, driving down the highway, a small smile on her face.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Like Hell,” I said, running a hand down my face, still not convinced I wasn’t in Hell. Perhaps this was the part where the demons made me believe I’d lived. Where they showed me Mia and then tore it all away from me, plunging me back underwater. Into isolation and cold.

“You took most of the hit,” she said. “Do you remember the crash at all?”

I remembered being followed, working on a plan of escape. I remembered Mia’s face, disappointed, hurt. You son of a bitch.

She’d asked me to run away with her, and I’d refused. Then, nothing.

“Not really,” I said, deciding to leave everything else out.

Kindly, Mia did the same. “We got distracted, and the car behind us went around the block and crashed into your side of the car as we went through an intersection. It was a hard hit. I’m not sure if you hit your head on the window or what, but you went limp almost immediately.”

“That’s embarrassing,” I mumbled, pressing my fingers into a knot at the back of my neck. It felt like someone had tried to swing my head around like a lasso.

Mia’s hand landed on my shoulder, and before I could stop myself, I placed my hand on top of hers. It grounded me, kept me in the present. My head still felt as if it could float away from my body any second now. “It was terrifying,” she said.

“Did the other driver die?” I asked, trying to figure out what car we were in and how we’d gotten there. “Whose car is this?”

“He’s dead,” she said.

I looked at her. The sun streaming through her window cast her profile in perfect silhouette. She looked like a piece of artwork, but I knew better. She was a poisonous snake. Beautiful and all things lovely, but deadly inside.

“You killed him?” I asked.

She nodded. “I shot him. He was going to kill us both.”

“You don’t have to justify it to me,” I said. “Thank God you managed to stay conscious during the crash or we’d be dead.”

“I owed you one,” she said. “You killed the hitman back at the house.”

“Then we’re even.”

She smiled and kept driving. The rub of the tires on the asphalt was soothing, and I was tempted to close my eyes and fall back asleep. But questions kept filling my mind.

“If I was unconscious, how did we get here?” I asked. “And you never told me whose car this is.”

“This car belonged to someone who was unfortunate enough to have parked less than half a block away from the scene of our accident,” she said. “After I shot the guy, you were out of it, but able to move. Kind of. I held you up and guided you to the car, hot-wired it, and drove out of the city as fast as I could.”

Damn. We weren’t even at all. Mia had saved me twice over, even after I’d been a jackass to her. I didn’t deserve her.

“Were there any witnesses?” I asked. “Any police?”

She shook her head and opened her mouth to answer, but then her phone rang. She grabbed it from the console and answered it right away.

“Matt? Hi.” Her face was serious, eyes narrowed in focus while she listened and nodded along to whatever Matt was saying. Occasionally, she hummed.

“I sent you everything I had in the email,” she said, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye and then refocusing on the road. “Will that be enough?”

She hummed a few more times and nodded.

“Thanks, Matt. See you soon.”

See you soon? Mia was going to see Matt soon? It sounded like she’d been making plans. Was Matt her back up plan? When I’d turned her down, she had turned her attention to another man. Mia and Matt. Their names even sounded cute together. I hated him.

“Who is Matt?” I asked, trying to sound disinterested, though my teeth were clenched.

Mia sighed, and her hesitation made me wish I hadn’t asked. I was getting my wish. We were going to part ways, go in different directions. I would be left to fend for myself, and Mia would face whatever trials came her way with…Matt.

“He’s my friend,” she said. “The one I mentioned earlier. He owed me a favor.”

I wrinkled my forehead. Remembering anything before the crash felt like trying to remember a dream just as the details were slipping away. “Your friend with the passports?”

She nodded. “He is willing to help. He can have his plane ready to fly tonight.”

It was a good plan. I’d believed it then, and I still did. It would work. Her boss wouldn’t send someone overseas to take her out. And Tad had a short attention span. As soon as I was out of his sight, he’d leave me alone. Except I didn’t have a passport. I didn’t have a friend with a plane. I didn’t have anyone to help me. No one outside of the mafia, and right now, everyone in the mafia wanted me dead.

Suddenly, Mia started talking, and the words came out so fast I could barely keep up. “I know you said you didn’t want to run away with me, and you can do whatever you want, but I sent Matt what I could find, and he got a passport and a new ID made for you. He has enough room on the plane, and he is willing to help you out because I told him you were a friend of mine. You can go with me and then we can part ways there. Whatever you want. I just want you to have an option.”

“You made me a passport?” I asked, hardly able to believe it. After what I’d said to her, the way I’d treated her, it was a wonder she had saved my life at all. But now she was also offering me a new future, free of charge. I didn’t know how to respond.

“You don’t have to use it,” she said, her voice soft. “I just don’t want to see you killed, and that is what will happen if you stay here. You have to know that. Getting away is the only option.”

“I can’t believe this,” I said.

Mia sniffled and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I knew you didn’t want to go, and I did it anyway. I’m sorry. I’ll tell Matt to forget your face and rip up the documents. I just thought I owed it to you to try.”

“Whoa,” I said, grabbing Mia’s hand in mid-air before she could pick up her phone. “That’s not what I meant.”

She looked at me, eyes narrowed.

“I’m sorry,” I said, looking right at her, hoping she could see how much I meant it. “Everything has been my fault. I screwed up your hit and made it so your boss wanted you taken out, and the burn notice out for you is all because of your association with me. I’ve ruined your entire life. You don’t owe me a thing.”

Mia’s eyes were glassy, and she shook her head. “You haven’t ruined my life, Jack.”

I snorted. “That’s a lie.”

“It’s not a lie,” she insisted. “Things are a bit more…colorful now. But I was lonely before I met you. I didn’t think I would ever find anyone who would understand my past or where I come from. But you have given me hope. I see a future for myself because of you.”

My instinct was still to turn away. To shut down and shut Mia out and end the conversation. But I didn’t want to. Not this time. I wanted to be with her. I didn’t want her to find someone like me. I wanted her to be with me. I wanted to be the man who understood her and knew all of her mistakes and faults. I wanted her to see and know me, too. I squeezed her fingers and ran my thumb across her knuckles slowly, trying to find the right words to tell her how I felt.

“I want to go with you,” I said, annunciating each word.

Her eyes widened. “You do?”

I nodded and took a deep breath. “I want to go with you, and I want to stay with you. Wherever we are going, I want to be together.”

She blinked and turned her attention back to the road, but not before I saw a single tear stream down her cheek.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

She thought about it for a moment and then laughed. “I think we are both crazy.”

“Why is that?”

“Because this will probably end in disaster,” she said, looking over at me, a smile spread across her face. “But damn it, if I don’t want to give it a try anyway.”

I brought her fingers to my lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “To giving it a try,” I said.

She leaned her head back against the headrest and laughed. “To giving it a try.”