He narrowed his eyes, the muscles in his jaw ticking for several seconds before he swallowed. “I do bad things to terrible people.”
“Why?” I muttered, wiping more tears before crossing my arms over my chest.
“So that defenseless college girls don’t get raped behind dumpsters.”
The vigilante card again.
“Is this a pastime? A calling like you’re the only one who can lift the hammer from the ground?”
“It’s a job.”
“A paying job?”
He nodded.
“Who’s your boss?”
“I can’t say.”
“So you … you’re … what? An assassin?” I laughed a little because it was ridiculous.
“Yes.”
My lips parted, muscles paralyzed as I waited for a “just kidding” or something more than a yes.
“No …” My head began to twist side to side and it didn’t stop. Turning, I fisted my hair, head still shaking as I paced several feet toward the sofa and back again. “No. No. No. This isn’t … no. Not my life. I’m going to run for president. I can’t have ‘slept with an assassin’ on my record. No. And my dad … oh god …” My fingers curled, digging into my scalp, and yanking my hair harder as I closed my eyes and stilled my feet. “He’s going to lock me in my room forever.”
“I saved your life. He should feel pretty fucking indebted.”
My eyes shot open, and my head resumed its shaking. “No. You don’t know my dad. He’s not going to feel indebted to you. He’s going to suggest I send you a thank-you card and get the hell out of LA. I can’t do this. I have to go.” I ran up the stairs to get dressed.
“You’re a liability now.”
I paused my hands as they worked to hook my bra. Glancing over my shoulder at him, I squinted. “I’m not.”
“I’ve revealed myself to you. That definitely makes you a liability.”
Swallowing the thick sludge of unease in my throat, I finished hooking my bra and fumbled with my shirt to pull it over my head. “S-so … what are you saying?” I pulled my hair out of the shirt’s neck and grabbed my jeans, my hands working as fast as possible.
“I’m saying I’ll be gone within the hour.”
“Gone where? Why? I’m not turning you in, Wylder.” I grabbed my bag while shoving my bare feet into my sneakers.
“Just gone. Because I let you live.”
My frantic movements came to a crashing halt as my head snapped up to meet his gaze. “You let me live?”
“Protocol is to put you down.”
“P-put me down? Like a rabid animal? The fuck!? I’m not a terrible human. You said you do bad things to terrible humans to save lives. Killing me isn’t that.”
“If I go to prison, it leaves a gap to be filled. While that gap waits to be filled, innocent people are in danger. It’s a numbers thing, Liv. Sacrifice one to save a hundred.”
Emotion contorted my face as I fought back the new round of tears. “Who are you?” I whispered in a thick voice. “Kill me? You can’t love me and kill me, Wylder.”
“I said I wouldn’t hurt you. I’m just telling you … this is it. You put me at risk, so I have to leave.”
“You have to disappear because I know?”
“I have to disappear because you don’t know. You don’t know what to do with this new information. And I can’t wait around for you to figure it out.”
My mouth opened as I shook my head. “I … I’m …”
“You’re what? Not going to say anything? Not going to tell your friends? Not going to have a weak moment when your conscience gets the best of you? It’s a lot, Liv.” He brushed past me to his closet, pulling out a leather bag and shoving clothes into it. “I don’t expect you to carry this in silence. We shouldn’t have …”
That reckless thing in my chest started to ache. “We shouldn’t have what?”
“Any of it. All of it.” He kept stuffing clothes into his bag. Regret poured out of every jerky move he made. He regretted us. He regretted me.
I didn’t know how I felt. The intensity of the pain began to numb my body and my mind. “My phone.”
He unzipped the side pocket to his duffle and pulled out a wad of hundreds, tossing them across the bed toward me. There must have been a thousand dollars waiting for me to take it.
“I don’t need a new phone. I just—”
“New phones. New numbers.”
Plural.
He was talking about both of us. New everything. New being defined as without Slade Wylder.
“Your school.”
“Not your concern.” He disappeared into the bathroom.
Minutes earlier I feared for my life, yet there he was letting me walk away.
He killed people for a living. His fate likely involved life in prison or execution. The bullet wound. He was on the receiving end of someone who refused to die so easily. I had no business being with him.
Not wanting to explain to my dad why I needed a new phone again, I scooped up the cash while more emotions bled from my eyes. My heavy feet took slow steps out of his bedroom and down the stairs.
“Jericho …” I kneeled by his bed and hugged him, swallowing my silent sobs. “Love you.” Unable to take one more second of the firehouse and the terrible things that happened to people who spent time under its roof, I made a straight line to the back door and ran to my Jeep.
“NOOO!” I hammered my hands against the steering wheel as emotions wracked my body. The last time my chest hurt that badly, I was saying goodbye to my mom as she was being lowered into the ground. “Ouch …” I pressed my bruised hands to my chest as if I could keep my heart from crumbling into a pile of dust, complete wreckage from Wylder the earthquake.
I started the Jeep and put it in reverse, like backing off a cliff. If I left, there was no going back. No second chances. He would disappear forever. Nothing more than another ghost in the firehouse—a gaping hole in my chest. Months of memories that would haunt me forever.
For … ever.
I hit the brakes a few feet before the street and gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles blanched, closing my eyes. “Mom … tell me what to do.”
“… you can’t judge someone by the culmination of their actions. The right person will see your soul in a way no one else can see it. I fell in love with your dad’s soul and it branded me in a way that made it impossible for me to not love him with all my heart.”
Forever was too long. I’d been in the Jeep for less than ten minutes trying to leave, and my lungs couldn’t breathe without him. Shoving it into Park, I picked up the pieces of my vulnerable …
Frightened …
Suicidal …
Stupid, crazy, impulsive heart.
And I ran inside the firehouse just as he carried two bags down the stairs. He stopped on the bottom step, hands clenching the handles of the bags giving me ample vein porn. I panted, my heart outside of my chest on full display. Swallowing past the thick emotions choking me, bottom lip quivering as I tried to hold it together, I glanced at my watch and whispered, “Ten minutes.” My gaze lifted to his. “It took me ten minutes to come back.” On a slow blink, I lost the battle with my tears. “My brain told me to leave…” I batted at the tears “…but my heart never made it out the door. So if you need to save the world, I won’t tell a soul. I just want to love you.”