Chapter 41
YOU LEFT ME
Caitríona
Leo plants himself in front of the door like a granite statue. The chain is latched, and my weapons sit on the desk with an imaginary tag titled Things You Can’t Touch Because A Man Decided So.
“Move,” I snarl for the hundredth time.
“No,” he replies for the same hundredth time, voice calm.
I pace the thin strip of carpet until it wants to peel. I’ve tried everything with this man, but he won’t budge. I’ve threatened, pleaded, ignored… Nothing. I’m teetering on the edge, near the point of hysterics.
So I try one last thing. “Christ on a bike, Leo, I will carve your name into a curse and teach toddlers to chant it. May your toast always burn. May your socks never dry. May every woman you ever love call you the wrong name.”
A smile twitches at his lips. “Noted.”
“And may your entire family line develop a horrible rash.”
He scratches his jaw, unimpressed. “We’re orphans, miss.”
“Then may you develop a rash.”
I rake my hands over my face and draw in a breath.
The room smells like moisture and nerves.
I could pick the chain in thirty seconds if he’d let me near it.
I could go through the window if the drop didn’t look like a quick obituary.
My skin is too tight. My heart is a battering ram against my ribs.
“He shouldn’t have gone alone,” I mutter. “He shouldn’t have—”
“He didn’t,” Leo bites back. “He took men.” A beat. “He just didn’t take you.”
“That’s not helping.”
“It wasn’t meant to.” He sighs, running his hand through his hair. “If it makes you feel any better, he left me too. I was supposed to be out there protecting him. Instead, I’m stuck here with you.”
I spin on him. “You think tying me to the bedpost would’ve gone any better?”
He considers this gravely. “I had rope.”
“Mother of—” I break off, chewing rage until it tastes like blood. I stalk to the window, peel the curtain with two fingers, and stare at the parking lot lights bleeding into the dark. “If he dies, I will—”
My voice falls away. I can’t even say it.
With an incessant ache thrumming in my chest, I do the stupidest thing: I pray. Not well. Not pretty. It’s a desperate whisper to a god I haven’t called in years. Keep Matteo breathing. I’ll take the consequence later. Please, keep him breathing.
My hand finds my chest like a magnet finds true north. My fingers brush the locket, then I press my palm over the blossom beneath the shirt, Livia, and hold until the ache steadies into something I can use.
Minutes stretch thin. The TV blares an obnoxious infomercial. I try to sit. I last exactly three seconds before I stand again and wear a rut into the carpet.
Leo’s phone finally buzzes.
I freeze. “What?”
He glances, expression intact, but something loosens at the corners of his eyes. “Message,” he says. “Tiernan’s down.”
The floor sways. “And Matteo?”
He takes just long enough that I want to break his thumbs. “He’s alive.”
My knees go. Not dramatically, thank God, just a slow, graceless fold until I’m on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands and the room doing a quick spin. A sound rips out of me, ugly and human. I swallow it down, but another comes anyway. My chest heaves, shoulders slumping.
“Thank you,” I tell the ceiling, or the floor, or the god who hadn’t returned my calls in years. “Thank you, thank you—”
Leo stands very still. “He’s five minutes out now. We should get ready to move.”
I laugh, which isn’t what my throat wants. It scrapes my ribs raw. Tears burn, then spill, hot and furious down my cheeks. I swipe at them with the back of my hand, annoyed at their persistence.
“I hate him,” I tell the tired bedspread. “I hate him for leaving me again. For putting me behind a door like a breakable thing.”
“He doesn’t think you’re breakable,” Leo mumbles.
“Shut up.”
He does, shockingly.
I breathe. I breathe again. Somewhere between the third and fourth one, the truth storms into my chest like it owns the space: I love him.
It lands quiet, like it’s been waiting for me to stop making noise.
The words had spilled out earlier when he left me out of desperation. A final, frantic move to keep him here.
But they’re true. It doesn’t fix anything though. It just makes the edges sharper.
A footfall I know like a bad habit resounds just beyond the door. Then keys jingle outside. I stand and then I’m moving and then I’m running, and Leo’s arm bars me for exactly one second before he steps aside. The chain skitters, and the lock turns.
The door opens on a man who looks like he wrestled the devil and won by offering it his soul. Blood freckles his cheek, his shirt is torn, but his eyes… they’re very green and very alive.
My mouth moves before sense can catch up. “You left me. Again.”
He smiles, small and wrecked. “Only to save you, Kitty Cat. Again.”
I hit him.
It comes out as a slap though it’s meant to be a fist to his shoulder that says don’t you ever and thank God you did in the same breath. He takes it. Then I throw myself into his chest with my face pressed to the spot over his heart and his arms come around me like a future I can’t live without.
“I hate you,” I whisper into his shirt.
“I know.” His mouth is in my hair, voice rough. “Hate me here. Always.”
I breathe him in, blood and gunpowder and underneath his unmistakable familiar manly musk, and I let the world be small for one impossible second.
Then I pull back, eyes burning, and jab a finger into his sternum. “You ever lock me in a room again, Rossi, and I will teach you new uses for a butter knife.”
He winces and grins in the same motion. “That’s fair.”
“Is it done?” I ask, quieter.
“It’s done.” He doesn’t look away. “Anything left of the Quinlan crew will be handled by the Geminis by tomorrow.”
A shiver walks down my spine that isn’t fear. I nod, once. “Good.”
“Which reminds me, we need to resurrect a ghost before my cousins go running into this war for revenge.”
Leo clears his throat as if to remind us we have an audience and also a life expectancy. “We should move.”
“In a minute,” Matteo says, still looking at me like he’s trying to memorize relief. His thumb skims the corner of my eye, catching a tear I missed. “You okay, Kitty Cat?”
I should snap at the name. I don’t. I take his wrist and press my mouth to the heel of his hand in a thank you I can’t speak yet. Then I lift my chin. “Don’t ever make me pray for you again,” I grumble.
“Then you’ll just have to always keep me where you can see me.”
“Fine,” I mutter, and step back, because if I don’t, I’ll forget we have company.
Leo sighs, a long-suffering sound. “We really should move.”
“For once…” I nod at Leo, then wipe my face with both palms and find my spine. “We agree.”
I grab my duffel which already sits packed by the door.
Leo must have done it while we were arguing.
For such a big man, he moves like a ghost. Matteo reaches for my bag, but I don’t let him take the weight.
We kill the lights, pocket the key, and leave Room 12 to whatever endings it has left.
The night outside is damp and tastes like the beginning of something I can’t name yet.
The only thing I know is that it requires both of us, alive, together.
Matteo winces every time he glances at his phone.
I sneak a peek and bite my lip at the onslaught of furious messages from his family.
I wedge myself in the backseat of the car beside him, chin on his shoulder while Leo threads us through Belfast’s wet, gray streets.
Matteo’s thumbs fly over his phone. The screen is a war zone of family group chats lighting up in rapid fire.
“Ready?” he asks, already wincing.
“As I’ll ever be,” I murmur.
He angles the screen in my direction so I can read it better.
Papà: MATTEO MARCO ROSSI. Explain to me why I just buried you in my head for twelve hours.
Do you understand what this has done to your mother?
To me? Where are you? No, don’t answer. Share.
Your. Location. If this is a stunt, it ends tonight.
If it wasn’t, you report to me the second you reach the jet. We will discuss consequences.
Alessandro: You absolute bastard. Relief level: obscene. Rage level: higher. I called off a war for you and then called it back on and then off again. Tell me you’re in one piece. Tell me you’re with Leo. Also tell me where the hell you are before I fucking grow wings.
Serena: I blacked out for three minutes and woke up angrier.
You’re ALIVE??? You text Ale and not ME?
?? I already ordered memorial cupcakes with your face on them.
Who’s paying for that, dummy? I’m hugging you and then I’m slapping you.
Probably in that order. Are you safe? Is she safe?
(Yes, I mean her. I know there’s a her. Don’t make me pry.)
Bella: I cried in public, you menace. Never forgiving you. Also do you need a care package or a shovel?
Papà: Stop ignoring me. Location. Now.
Matteo exhales, the sound half laugh, half penance. “They’re mad.”
“They love you,” I whisper, softer than I mean to, nudging his ribs. A part of me wishes anyone would ever be that angry about my death. “Text them back before your father relocates Belfast one building at a time.”
He fires off replies and squeezes my knee under the jacket like a secret apology.
Leo catches my eye in the rearview. “They done yelling at him yet?”
“Not even close.” And for the first time all night, it almost feels okay.