In Too Deep

15. Chapter Fifteen

~Cara~

My boss and his companions left me alone outside the operating room, promising that I’d be safe there. We weren’t at a hospital. I didn’t know what to call where we were; from the outside, it looked like someone’s house, but I watched as they took Marco into a full operating suite built into the basement. Mr Mitchell called the man who spoke to us a private doctor, but I suspected ‘mafia doctor’ would be more accurate. No questions were asked about how Marco’s injuries happened, and Mr Mitchell had to provide payment up front.

I was grateful for everything Mr Mitchell had done, but as I waited in the comfortable sitting room with its leather sofa and flat-screen TV, my thoughts kept returning to Kian.

When we pulled away from the restaurant, I looked back over my shoulder through the rear window of the SUV, watching as Kian raised his hands over his head, his silhouette highlighted by the headlights of the approaching police car. I could just make out the officers getting out of their car before we turned the corner and did our best to disappear into the London night.

“Why did you leave him?” I demanded of everyone in the car and no one in particular.

“They would have followed us if he came,” Mr Mitchell explained, keeping his eyes forward. “He’s letting us get away.”

I understood that, but I didn’t. Why would he sacrifice himself that way? What would happen to him? After everything we’d just been through, why didn’t he fight for us to stay together?

“We need to take care of Marco,” my boss added. “Focus on him now.”

My brother looked terrible laid out on the seat next to me. His eyes were swollen closed, his face bloodied and bruised. His breathing was shallow and laboured and his clothes were matted with blood in several places. Tourniquets had been tied to stop the bleeding. I spoke to him when I first got in the car but he didn’t answer me. I didn’t know if he could, or if he could even hear me.

It took a few hours for the doctor to remove the bullets from his body and set his broken bones, but eventually, the work was finished. Looking haggard and tired in his bloody scrubs, the doctor told me that Marco should recover fully over time. The blood loss hadn’t been too bad since we got him into surgery so quickly. If we’d had to evade the police, it might have been a different story.

Had Kian guessed that? Was that why he did what he did, so that I wouldn’t lose Marco too after everything else?

Marco needed to rest, and I was shown to a room for the night just down the hall from the operating suite. I had no change of clothes, so I simply lay down in what I was wearing, wrapping the blankets tight around me to help dispel the chill that still lingered from our time in the freezer. Lying alone in the unfamiliar room, I couldn’t help wondering where Kian was and if he still felt the cold too. Eventually, the stress and emotion of the day caught up with me and I fell into a restless sleep.

When I woke up in the morning and went back to the room from the night before, Marco was already there, sitting up in a wheelchair with both his legs in casts. Another cast covered his left hand.

“Tell me what happened with Kian,” were the first words out of his mouth, before I could even ask how he felt. “Simon told me what happened, but I want to know how you feel. How badly did he hurt you?”

Hurt me? It took me a moment to realize what he meant: he wanted to know how I felt emotionally about everything that had happened, especially around Kian’s deception. Did I still feel betrayed? Did I want revenge?

I could understand why he might think that, but I didn’t. After what happened between us in the freezer, I believed what Kian had told me: he didn’t set out to hurt me. To deceive me, yes. To use me, certainly. But not to hurt me, or at least not the me he got to know when we got to know each other. He was the kind of man who would go to those kinds of lengths to right a wrong, to seek justice for someone he loved who had been wronged, and he believed what he was doing was right. It couldn’t have been easy for him, and when I thought back to the betrayal he’d suffered at Thomas’ hand, I felt pity rather than anger.

I told Marco all of that as succinctly as I could. “I understand what he did and I forgive him for it.” I hadn’t told Kian himself that, at least not yet. Hopefully, I would get a chance soon. “I believe that he cares for me and that he stayed behind for my sake and for yours, to protect us.”

My brother nodded thoughtfully. “I think so too. If you said you were angry, I would have found a way to punish him, but if you’ve made peace with him, I’ll send a lawyer to help him out as much as possible.”

Of course my brother would have a lawyer on call, just like he had a doctor. I was starting to learn that what I had always thought of as paranoia before could actually come in handy.

“We should leave the country, though, as he said,” Marco continued. “I’ve got a plan in place in case this ever happened.”

“You have a plan for exactly this scenario?” I asked in disbelief, and Marco chuckled before wincing in pain, his body still sore.

“Not exactly this scenario but close enough.”

“You can’t even walk. How are you going to get on a plane?” The thought of leaving had panic rising in me, but I knew deep down it had nothing to do with leaving behind my home or my job or anything in my life except one thing: the man who had turned my whole world upside down.

“I’ve got a friend with a yacht we can use,” Marco explained. “There’s a house already waiting for us in Italy. It’s all arranged. We can leave tonight.”

He made it sound simple and easy, when I knew it wasn’t. My concern wasn’t about the logistics anyway. They were far more personal. “What about Kian?”

“I’ll send the lawyer, like I said. There’s nothing else we can do, and if we stay here long enough to get caught, it’ll defeat the purpose of him staying behind at all. This is what he wanted, Cara. This is what he told you to do.”

It was, but I couldn’t imagine getting on a yacht and sailing off to another place where I had no friends and no future, not when I’d finally found someone who made me feel alive.

Not to mention that I was done with being told what to do.

The small decisions I’d started making over the past few days were just the warm-up for the biggest decision of my life so far, but rather than feeling nervous about it, as the idea solidified in my mind, I felt almost excited. This must have been just how Kian felt when he thought his undercover mission had been approved, when he had a chance to do something to make things right.

“I assume you’ve got a decoy set of accounts you could use if you ever needed to make a plea bargain?”

The sudden change of topic took Marco by surprise. “What?”

“You heard me. You have a plan for every situation, Marco, so you must have one for that. If you were caught doing something and needed to make a plea, you have something you could offer them, don’t you?”

He looked almost impressed that I would guess that. “Of course I do, but that’s not the situation we’re in.”

“It’s not the situation you’re in,” I disagreed. “But if I were to go to the police to back up Kian’s version of events, I would be in a better position if I had something to offer them.”

Marco quickly put together what I meant and his eyes examined me closely, trying to determine how far I meant to go. “You won’t leave him behind?”

“I won’t.” After everything we’d been through together, I knew Kian would never leave me to take the blame or to deal with anything on my own. He’d have my back, and I saw no reason I couldn’t have his too. There had to be a way I could verify Kian’s innocence without endangering Marco. Things might not be black or white, but we could keep them on the lighter side of grey. “I understand why you need to go, but I don’t have to leave. I haven’t done anything wrong. If I give them what I have on you, I could get myself immunity and help Kian too.”

I could almost call the look in Marco’s eyes pride. “If that’s what you want to do, I’ll give you what you need. I can give you what I have on Park too. It should help them dismantle what’s left of his business. And you’ll come to Italy afterwards?”

I couldn’t think that far ahead yet. I had no idea what Kian would be thinking or feeling once everything from the past two weeks had sunk in. “I’ll have to make that decision later, but if I don’t come to live there, I will still come to visit. I love you, Marco, even if you did almost get me killed, more than once.”

He winced at the reminder, and regret filled his eyes. “I’m sorry that you ever had to get involved. I’m sorry about your accident and I’m sorry for the last few days. I tried my best to protect you.”

He had, by shutting me away, but that door had been permanently blown open. I couldn’t go back to that life, not in London and not in Italy either. “I would prefer that you didn’t get yourself involved in things that you had to protect me from, but that’s your life and your decision to make. I think it’s finally time for me to move out.”

Marco still had a few employees left who hadn’t been killed in the craziness of the last few days, and he sent them to our house to retrieve some things from his safe and to pick up some clothes for both of us. We spent the afternoon reviewing the information he could give me for the police, and when he left to go to the yacht that would take him away from me, I knelt down on the floor next to his wheelchair and hugged him as tight as I could without hurting me, just the way he’d hugged me after we lost our parents and after my accident.

“I would tell you to stay out of trouble, Marco, but I think that’s a lost cause.”

“I’ll do my best,” he promised anyway. “I’ll miss you, Cara.”

“I’ll miss you too. And I’ll see you soon, one way or another.”

As he requested, I waited until the following day to go to the police, until he’d sent me a message telling me his ship had left British waters and was on its way to the Mediterranean.

Armed with the computer drives, photos and other evidence Marco had given me, I walked into New Scotland Yard, the Metropolitan police headquarters, and walked straight over to the reception desk, my heart pounding in anticipation.

“Hello. My name is Cara Russo, and I’d like to speak to someone about Marco Russo and David Park.”

~Kian~

As much time as I’d spent in police stations in my life, I’d never been on the other side of the wall before. The small holding cell felt both familiar and unfamiliar, and I stared up at the ceiling while I waited to be called back for more questioning. They hadn’t charged me with anything yet despite it being almost two days since they’d brought me in, but they’d requested and received an extension on the usual twenty-four-hour holding period. Given the number of dead bodies involved, and the presence among them of one of London’s biggest crime bosses, they were being given a little more leeway.

When the police car pulled up outside the restaurant and the officers got out, I spoke to them first, trying to keep their attention on me rather than the car driving away. “There’s a gun in the back of my pants. Please, take it so I can put my hands down. I was shot in the shoulder earlier, and this really hurts.”

“Who was in the car that just left?” the officer who found the gun on me asked, looking after it suspiciously.

“I don’t know them. They just stopped to see what was going on, but when they got a look inside, they left.”

“This is a police-issue gun,” she pointed out as she examined the weapon.

“Bloody hell,” her partner called as he got his first look inside the restaurant. “I’m calling for backup.”

I ignored him and answered her instead. “It belongs to Thomas Redwell. He’s dead at the table inside.”

Her eyes snapped up to me. “You killed him?”

“No, but he shot me with that gun before he died. It’s a long story.”

They put me in the back of the car while more officers and the ambulances arrived and I watched them going in and out with bags of evidence containing guns and bullets, and stretchers with body bags being loaded into the back of the ambulance. I didn’t really feel afraid, but then, I didn’t feel much at all. My body had gone numb and not just from the chill. The thought of Cara leaving the country, of disappearing the way I knew she could if Marco set it up, and never seeing her again, made me feel completely empty inside, maybe even more than when I first heard about Matt’s death.

In chasing one thing, I’d found something far more fulfilling, but I’d managed to lose it in the end too, and I hated the idea of never knowing if she’d forgiven me or if she would regret what happened between us. For my part, I knew I’d never regret it. No matter how unusually it came about, it was the closest I’d ever come to finding true love.

My shoulder got treated before they moved me to the police station, and when I got to the interrogation room, I stalled as much as I could when it came to Marco’s involvement, trying to give him time to make whatever arrangements he needed to make to get himself and Cara away safely, assuming he had survived the night.

Though my lawyer advised me to only answer the questions they asked, I did far more than that. I went into the background between me and Thomas and Matt, what I’d been told about Matt’s death and how Thomas and I had taken on the undercover mission. When the questioning officer told me they’d found no record of the operation and produced a copy of the resignation email sent from my email six months earlier, I wasn’t surprised.

“That all matches with what he told me. I put my trust in the wrong person,” I conceded. “I let myself be used.”

I shared all the details of my time undercover and the life I’d built so that they could double check and verify my story. When I got to the last two weeks, I still told the truth but I left out a few things. I didn’t go into any detail about how Marco had been trying to hunt down Park with the intention of killing him, and of course, I left out the more intimate details of my relationship with Cara. When they asked me out-and-out if our relationship was sexual, I answered mostly truthfully: it was romantic, but we hadn’t consummated it before things went sideways with Thomas.

What happened in the freezer, I kept to myself.

At the end of the day’s investigation, a new lawyer turned up, someone I could guess just by the cut of his suit must have come from Marco. It made me glad to know he must have pulled through, and to know he didn’t want to kill me for breaking Cara’s trust, but I sent the lawyer away anyway. I’d already told them everything I knew, so there was nothing I could do now but wait.

I asked to be able to speak to Matt’s widow before I went back to the holding cell that night and they let me make the call. I had no doubt it was being recorded, but it didn’t matter since I intended to tell her the truth anyway.

“I thought you and Thomas dropped off the face of the earth,” she exclaimed when she picked up the phone and realized it was me. “Where the hell have you been?”

I told her exactly where I’d been. I told her what Marco said about the meeting where Matt was killed, and I told her that Thomas had betrayed him to David Park.

“Matt trusted him.” I could hear the bewilderment in her voice. “I trusted him too. I let him in our house. He played with my daughter.”

I knew how she felt. He’d fooled all of us. “I know. I wish it were more satisfying, I wish they had to look you in the eye, but they’re both dead now. That’s something, at least.”

She took a deep breath. “It’s more than something, Kian. You didn’t have to do this, but I know that if the roles had been reversed, Matt would have done the same thing. Come and see us soon, alright?”

I hadn’t told her about my impending charges or where I was calling from, so I kept my response vague. “I’ve got some work to do to get my life back in order after all of this, but I’ll see you as soon as I can. Give Olive a hug from me.”

That morning, I’d had to go through the whole story again, this time with officers from the National Crime Agency who’d been tracking both David Park and Marco Russo. They wanted information about the operations of both men, but there, I couldn’t be much help. With Park, I never knew much to begin with, and with Marco, I didn’t want to go too deep into that side of things. Although I knew Cara was innocent, they might not be convinced, so I didn’t want to share anything that might result in them being tracked down.

I was given some food and returned to the holding cell, having no idea what the investigating officers were thinking. Did they believe my story or did they think I’d made it all up to cover myself? After all, anyone who might be able to back me up was dead or vanished.

Minutes ticked by, turning to hours, and I started to get concerned. What were they waiting for? It felt like something must have happened, but confined to the small cell with no connection to the outside world, I had no idea what it might be. They couldn’t have found Cara and Marco, could they? I couldn’t believe Marco would be that careless, but maybe they had other moles and other sources.

My stomach twisted into tighter and tighter knots until finally, well into the evening, they took me back to the interrogation room. One of the officers I’d spoken to that morning greeted me with a grim smile. “Well, Mr O’Donnell, it looks like you’re free to go. Just don’t go too far, alright?”

I blinked at him in surprise, the words not at all what I’d been expecting. “You’re not charging me with anything?”

“Do you want us to?” he asked wryly.

“No, of course not, but… what happened? What did you find?”

They had to have uncovered some kind of evidence I didn’t know about. Hidden recordings from inside Marco’s house or at the restaurant? Evidence from Thomas’ phone, or perhaps Park’s? Any of that would help, but at the very least, they would have me on possession of Thomas’ gun at the scene. I never expected to be let off scot-free.

“Someone came forward to corroborate your testimony,” he told me. “They turned over some very valuable information in exchange for their own immunity and yours.”

My confusion grew stronger with each word. Who would do that? Who would be in a position to do it?

“You’re free to go,” he repeated. “There will be an internal investigation into Thomas Redwell and the officers will be in touch with you about that, but there’s no reason you need to stay here.”

I didn’t need to be told again. In a daze, I went to the desk to pick up the few personal items I’d had on me when I’d been booked, and I stepped out the front door as the sun was setting, taking a deep breath of the fresh air.

“Do you need a ride, sir?” a cabbie called out, parked just down the street.

“Yeah, actually. Thanks.” I wasn’t sure where to go; I didn’t feel like going back to my flat, but I couldn’t stay there either.

He switched his light off to show he was occupied as I walked over, but when I opened the back door, it wasn’t empty at all.

Inside was the last person I expected to see, but the one person I wanted to see more than anything, and I stood there with my mouth open, staring at her in disbelief.

“Cara?”

~Cara~

I’d never been interrogated before. Everyone was a lot nicer than I expected, perhaps because I made it clear pretty early on that I had information they would be interested in, and probably also because of my name. A couple of men spoke to me first to take down some general information, and about an hour later, the detectives who were looking into Park’s death arrived.

“I understand that you’ve arrested Kian O’Donnell,” I told them bluntly when the man and woman had both introduced themselves and taken a seat. “He didn’t do anything wrong. I can tell you exactly what happened.”

With them interjecting questions along the way, I walked through the events of Saturday, from Thomas’ arrival at our house up to my departure from the restaurant.

“Where is your brother now?” the man asked me.

“He left the country,” I told them honestly. “I don’t know where he went. He was in pretty bad shape, though. I’m not sure he’ll survive.”

I had asked Marco not to tell me where he planned to go so I wouldn’t accidentally let something slip. I knew how to get in touch with him, and as soon as I asked him for the location, he’d send it to me. That part, I didn’t tell the officers. I also exaggerated the severity of his condition, hoping they might decide he might have died and give up looking for him.

“And he left you behind?” the woman asked suspiciously. “After going to such lengths to defend you from Park?”

“We argued before he left. He wanted to let Kian take the fall for everything because he lied his way into our lives, but I didn’t think that was fair. He did lie, but for good reason, and he saved my life too.”

“What you’ve told us does match up with what Mr O’Donnell has said, almost exactly,” the man admitted. “But it sounds to me like he could have been working with Russo all along. Your brother might have sent you here to try to get him off.”

“My brother doesn’t know I’m here,” I lied. “And I can give you access to some of his financial information, as well as the investments that David Park had with him which caused the feud between them in the first place.”

As I expected, that piqued their interest, but the woman still had doubts about my motives. “Why would you betray your brother that way?”

“I told you: he wanted to sell Kian out, but Kian didn’t kill anyone. You won’t find his prints on any of the guns. He was there, the same as I was, but we were in the background. The fight was between Marco and David Park, we just got caught in the crossfire.”

“So you’ll give us the information you have in exchange for O’Donnell’s freedom?” the man guessed, understanding me completely.

“Yes. And my own, if necessary. You have nothing to charge us with anyway, so it’s no great sacrifice for you.” I did my best to look confident of that fact while the two of them exchanged glances.

“We’ll discuss your offer with our superiors,” the man suggested. “Give us a minute.”

They were gone for far more than a minute. Nearly two hours passed before they returned, so I imagined the debate had been quite vigorous, but in the end, the decision went my way. “You’ve got your deal,” the woman told me, still not sounding pleased about it. “So long as you provide what you promised. Now, show us what you’ve got.”

I handed over the information Marco had given me on two flash drives, and as they reviewed the contents in front of me, they both got progressively more excited, no matter how much they tried to hide it.

By the end, even the woman seemed to have warmed up to me. “This is very helpful, Ms Russo. We’ll release Mr O’Donnell as promised. He’s being held at the Acton station, I can give you the address.”

Armed with Kian’s location, I took a taxi there, hoping I would spot him on his way out. I didn’t want to go in and ask for him since I didn’t want our reunion to be in front of a crowd of strangers. It had been almost two days since I’d seen him and I had no idea what he’d been through or what was going through his head now that he’d had some time to let the whole situation sink in. It seemed safer to wait in the taxi and hope to speak to him in private.

When he stepped out the front door, my stomach fluttered in anticipation. Despite looking tired and needing a shave, dressed in poor-fitting clothes that must have been provided by the station, he still looked incredibly appealing. “Can you ask him if he wants a ride?” I asked the driver, who had very kindly sat there for an hour with me as we waited, doing crossword puzzles in the front seat while the taxi metre continued to tick away.

The driver called out to Kian and as he walked over, my heart beat faster, hoping that he wouldn’t find this too presumptuous, and hoping he’d be happy to see me. This could go a lot of different ways, but when he opened the door and saw me there, all I could see on his face was surprise. “Cara?”

“Hi.” I offered him a smile to let him know that I was there as a friend, not trying to kidnap him or any other crazy thing that didn’t seem nearly so crazy after everything we’d been through together. “You can get in if you like.”

Kian glanced around, like this might be some kind of set-up, but apparently he didn’t see anything suspicious because he climbed into the car next to me, closing the door behind him. “You’re the one who got me out?”

I hadn’t been sure what they would have told him, but I nodded in confirmation. “I made a deal. They wanted Park’s banking info more than they wanted you.”

“Park’s banking…” He started to repeat my words but trailed off, shaking his head. “What are you doing here? You were supposed to go with Marco. Is he okay? He made it, didn’t he?”

“He’s fine,” I quickly assured him. “Thanks to you, we got him to a doctor quickly and he’s supposed to make a full recovery. He left, as you suggested, but I decided to stay here.”

“Why?” He looked so completely confused, like he really couldn’t guess at the answer, when to me, it seemed obvious.

“I wanted to repay you. You saved me, in a few different ways. Not only from Park, but from the rut I was in, too. You made me see that there’s more to life than what I had seen of it, and that even if I can’t have the things I used to want, it doesn’t mean there aren’t good things still out there.”

“You owe me nothing, Cara.” He looked almost overwhelmed as his blue eyes looked deep into mine. “If anything, I’m the one who should be making it up to you.”

“I don’t want to keep track of who owes who what,” I told him honestly. “The last few days were insane. We can’t pretend they didn’t happen, but if you’d be interested, I’d kind of like to just start over. A clean slate for both of us. Two strangers who happen to be sharing a cab on an early summer’s night.”

A slow smile spread across Kian’s face as he thought that over. “I’d really like that. Where is this cab taking us?”

I hadn’t fully decided on that yet, but with all the time I’d spent at New Scotland Yard and then in the taxi waiting for him, I hadn’t eaten dinner yet. “Maybe a pub to get some food?”

“That sounds perfect,” Kian agreed, still smiling. “I’m buying. I had this crazy woman throw a bunch of fifty-pound notes in my guitar case the other day, so I’m feeling flush.”

I smiled back at him as he gave the driver an address. “That does sound pretty crazy. I hope you stayed far away from her.”

“I couldn’t. She had the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen. Until now, anyway.”

Kian took me back to the pub where he’d played on Friday, but being a Monday night, and with no possibility of celebrity sightings, the place was much quieter and cozier. We sat in a corner booth and talked and laughed and ate, just like a normal date. Just like two regular people might, and no one who saw us would ever know what we’d been through to get to that point.

And when we finished, Kian told me he didn’t feel comfortable going back to his flat just in case Park’s men had shared the location with anyone. He asked if I wanted to find a hotel with him for the night instead, and I didn’t have to think about it for a second. There was nowhere I wanted to be more than by his side.

~Kian~

Out of all the surreal moments in the last few days, walking into the east London hotel with Cara’s hand in mine might have just been the most unbelievable of all. She had a small bag with her containing a few days’ worth of clothes and some toiletries, and we stopped at a supermarket to buy a few essentials for me before heading to the hotel.

I would need to find a new place to stay and I’d have to talk to my former commanding officer about getting my job back, assuming I wanted to return to the force at all. At that exact moment, I didn’t know what I wanted or what my future might look like. All I knew for certain was that the incredible woman next to me had put herself on the line for me. She stood up to her brother, and to me, and did what she felt was right, not what anyone else thought best for her. She walked bravely into a situation she had no control over, where she couldn’t predict the outcome, and she managed to secure my freedom far more efficiently than I could have ever done it myself. I couldn’t have been more in awe of her.

She told a few lies along the way, but as I’d told her myself, things were rarely purely good or purely bad, and in the end, once I’d had a chance to think things over, I had to concede that justice had mostly prevailed. Park and Thomas were both dead. Neither of them would get to benefit any longer from what they’d done to Matt, or any of the other people they must have hurt along the way. Marco may have been chased out of the country, but he would land on his feet, I had no doubt. The police would seize Park’s assets and Marco’s decoy accounts, and Cara and I were free to move on with their lives.

It may not have been what I envisioned the end of my operation to be like, but I could find peace with it, and with Cara beside me, hopefully, I could find even more as well.

The hotel room couldn’t be called fancy, but it was comfortable, clean and private, which were the more important considerations for me. Thankfully, Cara seemed to feel the same, although when we got inside and I locked the door behind us, she looked back at it, chewing on her bottom lip. “Do you think we could reinforce it somehow?”

When the sense of security we took for granted had been compromised, it could be hard to feel truly safe again. Luckily, the room had a chair that I could jam beneath the door handle, and I barricaded us in as much as I could. “Better?”

She nodded gratefully. “Thank you.”

Although we’d talked comfortably at the pub over dinner, now that we were alone in a more confined space, the atmosphere seemed to have shifted. She watched every move I made carefully, and I felt even more aware of her than before too. Neither of us knew exactly what the other one expected out of this night, and I suspected that was the reason behind the sudden tension.

As far as I could see, the only way to make it go away would be to talk about it.

Taking a seat on the edge of the bed, I brought the subject up directly. “We never got a chance to talk about what happened in the freezer.”

A blush rose in Cara’s cheeks, but she didn’t try to put me off. She sat down next to me instead with just a small bit of space between us. “No, we didn’t. Although, I can’t say that I’m sorry Mr Mitchell showed up when he did.”

Just thinking back to the freezing conditions made me shudder. “The timing was pretty good, actually. Much later, and it might have been too late. If he’d shown up a minute or two earlier, it could have been quite awkward.”

“And unsatisfying,” Cara added, making us both smile.

“So, you don’t regret it?” I had to ask. “Now that we’re out, I mean, and you know it wasn’t your last chance.”

Her brown eyes looked directly into mine. “I don’t regret it at all. I can’t quite believe it happened, but that goes for all of it, really. I’ve thought about it a lot over the past two days, and if we had never got a chance to see each other again, there would have been only one thing I regretted.”

That certainly piqued my interest. “What would that be?”

“That I didn’t tell you that I understand why you did what you did. I’m not angry with you for it.”

She’d certainly been giving me that impression all evening, but hearing the words from her lips still meant a great deal to me. “I wouldn’t blame you for being angry. In some ways, Thomas did the same thing to me: using me for my connections and what I could do for him, and I’m sure as hell still angry with him about that.”

“It’s not the same thing,” she disagreed, shaking her head when I tried to protest. “I’m not saying it was right, but I understand why you did it. You went to great lengths for your friend and for what you believed to be necessary to make things right, and honestly, it makes you far more like Marco than like David Park or Thomas. And Marco, as much as he might frustrate me at times, is still someone I love. Even if I don’t agree with everything he does, I know he’s a good person at heart, and I feel the same about you, Kian.”

That didn’t quite sit right with me. “You see me as a brother?”

She laughed, giving me a nudge with her elbow. “I’m just saying you’re both men that I admire, even if you make mistakes.”

“That means a lot to me, Cara,” I told her honestly. “If I’d left you feeling used or hurt, that would have killed me. Thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt.”

She nodded, swallowing hard as she licked her lips, as if she still had something difficult to say. “There is one other thing I wished I’d said to you at the time.”

“And what’s that?”

“You said you loved me,” she reminded me, though I hardly needed the reminder. I’d never said those words to a woman before, so they were pretty firmly imprinted on my memory. “And in reply, I asked you to have sex with me. It wasn’t the most romantic response ever.”

“Most men would take it,” I pointed out with a laugh, and Cara joined in, her beautiful smile lighting up her face.

“Well, what I should have said was that I fell in love with you too, Kian. I guess I didn’t say it because I still felt unsure if the person I’d fallen in love with was the real you, or if he was a combination of who you pretended to be and who I wanted you to be. But when you gave us the chance to get away, when you put yourself in the line of fire like that, I realized that no matter what parts of our relationship were fake, you were still the man I thought you were. Maybe your name is different, and your job, but the parts that matter, the way you treated me and the way you make me feel, those parts were real. And if you still think there’s something between us worth figuring out, then I’d be willing to…”

I let her speak as long as I could, but eventually, I couldn’t hold back any longer. I’d been dying to kiss her ever since she said she was in love with me, and when she added the ‘if’ I thought there was something between us, as if there could possibly be any question about it, my control broke. My hand curled around her neck and my other went to her waist as I pulled her closer to me and pressed my lips to hers.

It didn’t feel like just a kiss. In it, there was apology and acceptance, forgiveness and hope. I didn’t simply kiss her; I inhaled her. With my tongue, I claimed her. My hands caressed and explored her until I was sure I’d gotten my message across, but just to be sure, I spoke the words out loud too. “Yeah, Cara. I think there’s something between us.”

She gave a breathless laugh, her brown eyes shining with happiness and anticipation.

I knew exactly what I wanted, but I didn’t want to put any pressure on her either. “We don’t have to rush anything, but if you…”

That time, she was the one who cut me off, swallowing my words in her kiss.

My shoulder was still bandaged, limiting my range of motion, so Cara helped me to undress before taking her own clothes off. “Lie down,” she whispered to me as I reached for her, eager to run my hands over her soft, smooth skin. “I’ve got this.”

Her confidence only made her more beautiful, and I hurried to comply, lying down in the middle of the bed with my head on the pillows and my hard cock lying flat over my stomach. Cara crawled onto the bed after me, stopping to lick her way up my cock as it twitched in excitement, before she straddled me.

Mesmerized by her, I watched as she lifted my cock into place, rubbing its head through the wetness between her legs a couple of times before placing it at her entrance and slowly sinking down onto me.

“Fuck, Cara.” My voice came out tight and needy. “You look incredible and that feels amazing.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” She closed her eyes as she continued to lower herself, my cock sliding deeper inside her as her warmth enveloped me. “It feels so good, Kian.”

“I told you: it’s better when you’re not worried about freezing to death,” I teased her.

“So much better,” she agreed as we both laughed, but as soon as she started to move, the laughter died off, replaced by sighs of satisfaction and pleasure.

With my left hand, I reached up to her breasts, and my right hand, which couldn’t reach as high, went to her clit. I kept my touch light at first, letting her set the pace as she rode me, each stroke of my cock with her body feeling more perfect than the last. She moved slowly at first, drawing it out, but as her need increased, so did her speed, and my fingers moved quicker in response.

“I’m starting to think I never made it out of that freezer,” I told her as her breathing grew more uneven. “I think I must have died, because this has to be heaven. Nothing on earth could feel this good.”

“As long as it’s real, I don’t care where we are,” she teased me right back. “I just don’t want it to stop.”

I didn’t either, but eventually, it had to. When she got close, I focused all my energy on her clit and raised myself up suck on her nipple at the same time. With her hips still bucking against me, Cara came, her body contracting around me, and the feel of her pleasure made me lose control too. With my face against her chest, I emptied myself deep inside her, our naked bodies warm and all our secrets out in the open.

It might not have been our first time, but it felt special anyway. It felt like the start of something new: a whole new life waiting to begin.