Chapter 28
twenty-eight
BILLIE
I know I shouldn’t do it.
I am in bed with Rodrigo, and I know exactly where this leads, but I don’t care.
There’s an old version of me— the responsible one who carries her passport everywhere and does laundry on Sundays— who is screaming at me to think this through. But that version of me has never been kissed like this.
His kiss feels familiar, which is strange, because we’ve only kissed once before— it’s not some grand, cinematic observation about electricity, but warmth.
The kind that starts at your lips and spreads down through your chest like you’ve swallowed something golden.
His hand is on the side of my face, thumb tracing my jaw like he has all the time in the world— Rodrigo doesn’t rush— and I’m not thinking about the fact we’re being chased through Europe by assassins.
I’m thinking about his mouth. And his hand.
And the way his other hand has found the small of my back and is pulling me closer in a way that feels less like a demand and more like a question.
I answer it. I press into him, my fingers sliding up the back of his neck, into his hair— which is unfairly soft, by the way, for a man who works in construction.
This seems like something I should have noticed before now, but in my defense, I’ve been a little busy running for my life.
The responsible part of me tries to narrate my own experience back to me like a nature documentary.
Here we observe the common Billie Harper in her natural habitat: making wildly irresponsible decisions.
But his mouth moves to my jaw, then my neck, and the nature documentary narrator shuts up.
I have been kissed before. I’ve had boyfriends and first dates and one memorable New Year’s Eve where I kissed a stranger who turned out to be my Uber driver.
But none of those kisses felt like this— like being found.
Like someone reaching through all the noise and static of who I pretend to be and putting their hand directly on the part of me I keep hidden.
His lips come back to mine. He smiles against my mouth. I feel it— the curve of it— and something in my chest cracks open.
“Billie,” he says, and the way he says my name sounds like it belongs to someone more interesting than me. Someone braver. He pulls back, just enough that I can see his face, and his eyes are so serious it almost hurts.
“I know this is complicated,” he says.
“The arms dealer situation or the sharing a bed situation?” I manage. My voice comes out rougher than I intended.
He almost laughs. Almost. “The bed situation. Though, yes, also the other thing.” His thumb is still on my jaw, like he can’t quite bring himself to stop touching me. “I know enough about you now, Billie. You will wake up in the morning and you will feel terrible.”
“I won’t?—”
“You will.” He says it so gently it doesn’t feel like an interruption.
It feels like someone handing you a coat when you didn’t realize you were cold.
“You will feel like this happened because of adrenaline, or because you were scared, or because we are in a situation that is— how do you say— not exactly normal.”
“Rodrigo—”
“And I don't want that.” His voice drops, quieter now, like he’s telling me something he’s been carrying around for a while.
“I don’t want the first time with you to be something you have to explain away tomorrow.
I want it to be something you chose. Completamente.
No regrets. No second thoughts. Perfect. ”
I stare at him. That might be the most thoughtful thing a man has ever said to me— which doesn’t say much for the men I’ve met.
The hotel room is dim, just the pale wash of a streetlamp coming through the curtains, and in this light his face looks like one of those paintings you see in museums that make you stand still for too long.
I think about every guy I’ve ever been with who never once stopped to consider what I might feel afterward.
Who never even entertained the possibility that my feelings about something could be more important than getting the something itself.
And here is Rodrigo Esperanza, pulling back in the middle of the best kiss of my life because he’s worried about my morning-after emotional state.
It hits me: If I don’t sleep with this man— right now— I will regret for the rest of my life.
Something hot and bright builds behind my eyes. Not quite tears. Something bigger than that.
“I can’t imagine regretting this,” I tell him.
He searches my face. Those eyes— dark and steady and so impossibly kind it makes my chest ache— move over me like he’s reading something written in a language only he understands.
“You’re sure?” he asks.
“I’m sure,” I say. And then, because I’m still me, I add: “I think I might regret not doing it.”
He laughs then. Really laughs. The sound rumbles through his chest and into mine because we’re still that close, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever heard.
He kisses me again. Slower this time. More deliberate.
Like now that we’ve both agreed to be here, there’s no reason to rush.
His hand slides from my jaw to the back of my neck, fingers threading through my hair, and I feel myself go soft in a way I didn’t know I was capable of.
Like I’ve been holding myself rigid for years and only just now realized I could stop.
I pull him closer. It feels like we have all the time in the world— and we’re going to need it.
We are not running right now. We are not hiding. We are not strategizing or worrying or looking over our shoulders. We are just— this. His mouth on my collarbone. My fingers tracing the lines of his shoulders. The sound of his breathing, and mine, tangled together in the dark.
I stop thinking about tomorrow. I stop thinking about Marco, about the Twin Ledger, about Alana and her pink designer luggage and her casual relationship with international crime. I stop thinking about Tyler, and ethics, and whether or not I deserve my own happiness.
I stop thinking entirely.
And I give myself over to him— to us— to whatever this is.
His hands are gentle and certain and everywhere, and I am falling into something I don’t have a name for yet, something warm and vast and terrifying in the best possible way, and the last coherent thought I have before I lose myself completely is this:
So this is what it feels like to be chosen.
* * *
The next morning, I wake up to the smell of coffee and the sound of someone quietly arranging silverware, and temporarily I forget that my life has gone completely off the rails.
Then I open my eyes and see Rodrigo sitting at the small table by the window, morning light falling across his shoulders, pouring coffee from a silver carafe like we’re in a European travel commercial, and I remember everything— the running, the danger, last night.
Especially last night.
“Buenos días,” he says, looking up. His smile makes me feel like you’ve done something right just by existing.
“I ordered breakfast. I didn’t know what you liked, so I got— well.
” He gestures at the table, which is covered in plates.
Croissants, fruit, eggs, toast, some kind of pastry I don’t recognize, and what appears to be an entire wheel of cheese.
“You ordered for a family of six,” I say, sitting up and pulling the sheet around me.
“I wanted options.”
I grab my robe— which has been unceremoniously dropped on the floor by the bed— and pad over to the table, sitting across from him. He slides a cup of coffee toward me without asking if I want one, which means he already knows me well enough to understand that the answer is always yes.
We eat. And it’s— nice. Nicer than it should be, given the circumstances.
He tears a croissant in half and hands me the bigger piece without making a thing of it.
I watch him spread jam with a kind of careful precision that tells me something about who he is: a man who pays attention to small things. A man who doesn’t rush.
“Last night was—” I start.
“Amazing,” he finishes. Not cocky. Just honest. He meets my eyes over his coffee cup and holds them there. “Increíble.”
I feel heat crawl up my neck. “I was going to say 'unexpected,’ but sure, we can go with yours.”
He laughs softly, then sets his cup down. The laugh fades. Something shifts in his expression— a tightening around his jaw, a seriousness settling into his features like clouds moving over a field.
“Billie, I want to talk to you about something.”
Here it is. The morning-after conversation I was bracing for. Except when he talks, it’s not what I expect. He’s going to tell me that last night was fun, but it’s over.
“I’ve told you about my family home,” he says. “In the Italian countryside. A small chalet— it’s in the mountains, very quiet. Beautiful village. Cobblestone, flowers. The kind of place where nothing bad has ever happened.” He pauses. “I think we should go there.”
“I know,” I nod, agreeing with him. “It sounds magical.”
“You and me. Without Alana.”
The way he says without Alana is deliberate. Like he’s been thinking about this for longer than just this morning.
I look at him. The sunlight is catching the edge of his jaw. I’m distracted by how handsome he is, but then I realize what he’s trying to tell me:
He wants to abandon Alana and leave her to deal with the Twin Ledger on her own.
“We can be safe there,” Rodrigo continues. “Benny is already there. We can wait things out, contact the right people?—”
“But,” I stutter. “Alana got us our passports. She did what she said she was going to do and held up her end of the bargain.”
Rodrigo sighs, running a hand through his hair. “She is a viper, Billie. I know her better than you do. There is something in this for her. She will feed us to the wolves the first chance she gets.”
He leans in, taking my hands in his. “I want to keep you safe,” he says gently. “I can’t guarantee that as long as Alana is around. Billie— for our own safety— for your own life— we need to leave her.”