Chapter Twenty-Five
I sit on the sidewalk, my ankles crossed and a blanket around my shivering shoulders, as two cops haul Clarisse and Thomas into a police car.
Clarisse is still blabbering about the gum stuck in her hair, her cheeks streaked with melted mascara and her red lipstick still smeared all over her teeth.
Thomas still has his eyes closed, no longer able to rub his temples, thanks to the silver handcuffs around his wrists.
Serves him right.
Let’s see how he likes restraints.
Nico is across the street with his arms around his mother, talking her down. When she saw on the news that her son had been involved in an armed assault a block away from her apartment, she came running.
In front of me, a third officer struggles to shackle Little Lester, who is screaming in a foreign language, a slightly unhinged gleam in his eyes. Every few seconds, he points at me and lets out a string of profanities as the cop tries to wrestle him into submission.
His partner turns to me and groans. “Just got off the phone with FBI Director Simon Fischer. Apparently, the feds have been trying to track these three down for months. Those two have been going from town to town all over the Northeast, swindling innocent people and tracking down bounties. Apparently this one”—he indicates the mobster—“got into a bit of trouble in Yorktown. Owes the Rudaj Organization an ungodly amount of money.”
I raise an eyebrow. “The Rudaj Organization?”
“Albanian Mafia. Traffickers—arms, drugs, girls. You name it. This guy appears to have severely pissed off one of the bosses by screwing him out of a considerable payday. They tracked him down a few months back, and he blackmailed these two idiots into helping him collect from your boyfriend to pay them off. And when that didn’t work… ”
I swallow the lump forming in my throat. “Let me guess. He figured kidnapping and ransom might do the trick?”
The cop snaps his fingers. “Bingo. And those two bozos have done a pretty terrible job of covering their tracks. We have footage of them pulling what appears to be a toy gun on a cashier. And they keep leaving empty liquor bottles with their prints in the cars they ditch. I assume the alcohol might be a little bit to blame for their slippery fingers. But for amateur con artists, they sure do move fast. And when criminals cross state lines as quickly as they’ve been doing, it leaves our people with a lot of paperwork and a nightmare headache.
Hence why it’s taken so long for the feds to nail ’em.
” He shudders, shaking his head. “I knew there was a reason I avoided casinos. Sad, sad places. Always been afraid of unhappy endings.”
“Me too!” I say, choking on a laugh.
The cop leans forward and high-fives me. “Well, we can’t thank you enough. If your friends hadn’t called this in, we’d still be chasing these three around in circles.”
My cheeks flush with pride at the memory of my Salty Girls coming to my rescue.
My very own Upper Shoal.
My dolphin horde.
My treasure trove.
“It was all them,” I say.
This time, it’s the officer’s turn to raise his brows.
“It looks like you landed quite a few punches yourself. Don’t sell yourself short—you incapacitated your attacker and distracted the woman long enough to free your man.
And your friend Angel told me that you were the one to make the rescue call. ”
I bite my lip. “That is true,” I admit. “But I blame my career as a copywriter for my thumb’s stellar muscle memory. Apparently, I don’t need to see to type an SOS.”
The officer grins. “Well, Ms…”
“Saboonchi.”
“Right. Well, Ms. Saboochy—”
He butchers it.
But I let it slide.
Just this once.
“—it sounds to me like you saved yourself.”
I smile up at him, straightening my shoulders under the blanket. “Thank you, sir.”
“Of course,” he says, his face turning as red as the sirens. “What brought you to New York, anyway? You have a Connecticut license.”
“Looking for true love,” I tell him.
“Did you find it?”
“I think so.” I bite my lip, studying Nico. “But not in the place I expected.”
He clears his throat and turns his attention back to his partner and the man in cuffs.
“Okay, no more funny business. There are a lot of people who can’t wait to sit you down and ask you some questions.
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney… ”
As he tells M.C. “the Shrug” Lester his rights, Lester locks eyes with me one more time.
He holds up his wrists with a crooked grin.
The playful fire in his eyes hasn’t dulled a bit.
And as he lowers his body into the cop car, joining a gobsmacked Clarisse and Thomas, he doesn’t once break eye contact with me.
A silent promise that he’ll see me again.
Even if only in my dreams.
A shiver runs through my body like an electrical current.
And off in the distance, I swear I hear a siren call.
You have fulfilled your destiny, a voice says inside my head. Do not waste it.
Wasn’t planning on it.
“What the hell was that all about?” Nico asks as he takes a seat next to me on the curb. Across the street, his mother has joined Angel, Roy, and Kalli, who appears to be reading something aloud from her phone. I close my eyes and say a silent prayer that it isn’t an excerpt from my latest fic.
“Oh, you know.” I look up into the pools of his eyes and get momentarily distracted.
How did I ever think they were gray? They’re so obviously the lightest, truest blue.
“The NYPD was just thanking me for my great act of heroism. I thought about chewing them out for their history with stop-and-frisks, but I’m pretty sure Angel already read them the riot act, so… ”
Nico leans forward and tucks a piece of my hair behind my ear.
I momentarily forget how to breathe.
“You are a hero, Joon,” he says. “You saved my life, do you realize that?”
“I’m sure we can come up with some kind of repayment plan,” I try to joke, but it comes out all weak and strangled.
“Seriously. Thank you, Joonie. You were amazing. Like Merriah, but better. You never needed a Ryke or a Ryan Mare or”—he swallows—“even me. You’ve always been the smartest, most badass person I know. Maybe now you can finally believe that, too.”
Warmth spreads through my stomach. “You know what? I think I might actually be starting to.”
“Good.”
He leans in for a second, his eyes searching mine, before pulling away again.
Unsure.
“Nico?”
“Yeah?” His voice is barely a breath.
“Just because I don’t need you”—I cup the side of his face, using my thumb to trace the edge of his stubbled jaw—“doesn’t mean I don’t want you.”
He doesn’t blink.
He doesn’t even breathe.
“You called me the man you love.”
Suddenly shy, I turn away, biting the inside of my cheek. “I did.”
“Look at me, Joonie.”
I do, and what I see steals all the oxygen from my lungs.
Nico’s cheeks are flushed, his eyes wide with adoration. With hope.
“Did you mean it?” he asks.
I nod. “You were right. I was too focused on my fairy-tale ending to see what was right in front of me.”
I lift my lips to his forehead and kiss him lightly there.
“Even though I’m not your Prince Charming?”
His body is so still. It’s as if he’s worried he might spook me.
I bring my lips to his ear. “Especially because you’re not my Prince Charming.”
“I’m still the same guy, Joon,” he warns.
“Once the adrenaline wears off, you might not want me. I’m still a grouch and a cynic.
Like, I’m fully investing in space travel in case the Earth runs out of natural resources and we need to start a colony on another planet.
I can be an anxious mess sometimes. And mean to myself.
And to others. Even when I don’t mean it, when I don’t want to be.
What if I say something wrong and accidentally break your heart?
What if we fight and resent each other and never speak again?
I don’t know if I could live with myself if my darkness absorbed all your light.
Because that’s what you are, Joonie. Pure, radiant light. Always have been.”
“Nico?”
He stops ranting long enough to look at me.
And the moment he does, I lean in and kiss him.
His lips are soft against mine, and he tastes both sweet and smoky and so incredibly like himself that I almost cry out. And when his tongue teases the seam of my mouth, I open up, and our tongues tangle. He nibbles on my lower lip, and I can’t hold back a groan.
I try to convey everything I want to say with my kiss.
That I was wrong to pursue someone I’d never even met, convinced he was my soul mate.
Because it doesn’t matter if my relationship with Nico isn’t perfect.
I’m not looking for smooth sailing anymore, but someone I want stuck on the ship, who will weather the storms alongside me.
We can argue and disagree, and as long as we respect each other, we’ll communicate our way through it.
I am ready to earn my happily ever after with Nico.
When I pull away, panting, he’s studying me with disbelief. As if I’m a revelation.
The fanfic writer in me whispers, He’s your loch.
And at that exact moment, I swear to the holy Furnace, to the Fates, to Amphitrite herself, that Nico begins to glow.
When he sees the wonder on my face, a small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.
As if I am glowing, too.
“Nico.” I take his hand in mine and squeeze tightly.
“Hm?”
“If you’re getting on that rocket ship to Mars, I want you to save me a seat.”
He laughs. “Consider it done.”
And then he kisses me again.