Chapter 8 #2
If he’d told her back then, been completely honest about his job and why he shouldn’t be with her, then they could have had a proper plan in place to protect her from winding up right where she was now.
Now that he was looking at their relationship through different eyes, he realized Ally would have supported him one hundred percent.
She would have been willing to make accommodations to be with him and remain safe.
But he’d blown everything.
In doubting himself, he’d gotten Ally into a mess he didn't know how to extricate her from.
“Please, Mateo. I don’t want to believe it was all a lie,” she whispered, those imploring eyes of hers staring up at him. “I don’t want to believe you were a lie. Did you ever feel anything for me at all, or was it all an act?”
“Oh, little mouse,” he murmured, stepping closer to her, and grateful he’d chosen this room since the camera in it was still turned off from when Nathan had been in here with Emma.
No one seemed to have noticed yet, and he’d kept it off not because he’d known he’d want a small measure of privacy, but because some gut instinct had told him to leave it as it was.
He’d forgotten about it until this morning, when he was trying to think up what he was going to do with Ally today, knowing the guys were anxious to be able to play with her a little.
If anyone realized he was in here without the camera on, he could always blame Nathan, say the man must have disabled it to get time alone with the woman he was obsessed with.
“None of the time we spent together was an act,” he said, lifting a hand to palm her cheek, but pulling back at the last moment because he couldn’t face another round of her calling him a monster.
It was true, and he deserved all the hatred he was sure she felt for him, but he couldn’t handle the rejection when emotions he’d refused to feel for two decades were now raging inside him, demanding to be let out.
“I don’t understand,” she said helplessly. “I fell in love with you. I know we never said the words, but I thought … I thought you loved me too. But I didn't even know you.”
“I lied to you, little mouse. I didn't want you to know the truth because it might change how you looked at me.”
“So, you're really a human trafficker. This is the real you. What we shared was real, but you were hiding this side of yourself all along.” Ally said the words as statements, but he couldn’t help but feel they were really questions.
This was it.
The one moment when he had to decide what path he was going down.
Either he continued to allow her to believe the worst of him, think of him as a monster, believe she’d never seen the truth about him, and spend the rest of her life hating him.
Or he told her the truth, that he was working undercover to bring Azure down, that she’d known the realest version of him that had existed since he was fourteen, and he’d lied about his job but not because he trafficked women for a living.
It was safer to lie, let her believe he was truly a part of this, but he couldn’t seem to make the words come out. She already hated him, she’d continue to hate him when she learned he couldn’t get her out until she was sold. Why bother to try to change that?
Only as he stared into her bright blue eyes, he knew the choice he had to make. Really, there was only one he ever could have made, because Ally was everything to him, and he couldn’t stomach living with her hatred a single second longer.
Throwing caution to the wind, Mateo pressed his palm to her cheek. She didn't lean into the touch like she would have five months ago, but she didn't jerk away from him either, so that was something.
Then, drawing in a breath, he did it, just like ripping off a Band-Aid. “I'm undercover, little mouse.”
Ally gasped, eyes wide as saucers, as she trembled beneath his touch. “Undercover?”
“Yeah, little mouse.”
“You're a cop?”
“Used to be. Then I joined Prey Security as part of their undercover team. You’ve heard of Prey?”
Nodding, she continued to stare at him, like she was seeing him for the first time. “Why didn't you tell me?”
Sighing, he sat down on the bed, picked her up, and set her in his lap.
She struggled to get away from him, albeit, half-heartedly, but he just tightened his hold on her and buried his face in the crook of her neck, breathing her in, and relishing the feel of her in his arms. “Need to hold you for a moment, little mouse,” he told her, his voice uncharacteristically shaky.
After a moment, she froze, then a sob burst out, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, shifting so she was practically melded against him, her knees on either side of his thighs, and clinging to him while she wept.
His hand stroked her back, tracing the length of her spine, and he dotted kisses to her cheeks, her forehead, the top of her head.
“I didn't tell you what I do for a living because I was scared,” he admitted.
“Scared?” Her wet face tilted back so she could see him.
“Yeah, baby, scared. I’m not good enough for you, you deserve the world, and I can't give you that.”
“You gave me more confidence than I've ever felt before, you helped me learn who I am and what I like.
I would never have thought you weren't good enough for me because you were undercover.
In fact, I probably would have thought it was another point in your favor and another reason I wasn't good enough for you.”
“Don’t say that, little mouse,” he growled, taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger, holding it tight enough to make her wince.
“You are perfection. I love every single thing about you, and have pretty much from the moment I met you.
I ghosted you because I was a coward. Because I started working here at Azure, and I was worried about you being in danger.
I didn't know that they already knew about you. I knew that ghosting you was the only way I could leave, because if I told you that I was leaving and you asked me to stay, I would be powerless to stay away from you, to not give you what you wanted.”
“I thought you left because you realized I was the freak everyone else always thought I was,” she whispered.
Crushing his mouth to hers, he kissed her like he’d been wanting to for five long months. Mateo tried to pour everything he felt for her, his love, his guilt, his regret, into the kiss, so she would never again doubt that he loved her with a ferocity he’d never believed himself capable of.
“I didn't know you were going to be brought here until I saw you in that cell. It’s a test. For me. To prove my loyalty to Azure. We had a … well, it doesn’t matter, but we had an incident, and now our boss is unsettled, wants us to prove we’re not traitors.
I never volunteer to train the girls, I can't, it makes me feel ill. But you … I couldn’t let anyone else get their hands on you.
I don’t want to be doing these things to you, baby, I hate it.
Despise every second of it. But I don’t have a choice.
If they find out I'm not who they think I am, they will use you to punish me.
You think the things I've done to you so far are bad, they're not. They’re me doing everything I can to protect you, shield you, while still maintaining my cover. What they could do to you is so much worse than you could ever imagine.”
“I believe you, Mateo,” she said softly, framing his face with her small hands, and the relief that those words gave him was incomprehensible.
“I don’t deserve you, baby.”
“You shouldn’t say that. I think maybe … we’re both more deserving than we realize.”
Leaning forward, he pressed his lips to her forehead and let them linger there. “You are deserving of only good things, little mouse.”
“Are you working on a way to get me out of here without breaking your cover?” she asked, and the trust in her eyes was like a punch to the gut, because in answering her question, he was going to shatter her heart all over again.