Chapter 25
LINCOLN
TIME TO SLEEP
If this were a game of chess, then I suppose this is what we call a stalemate.
The queen is in check, and my knight’s sword is in my hand.
In this case, the queen begs to end the game.
But I can’t, I won’t swing my weapon. So, we simply wait.
And watch. We sit in our squares—on a silky bed, actually—and stare up at a ceiling as beautiful as if Michelangelo himself stopped by to grace Aster with his art.
“Do you see the pretty flowers?” Nova lazily points at the corner of the ceiling, her voice scratching out on a barely there murmur. She’s more asleep than she is awake. “It’s a whole rainbow of dahlias.”
I hold her close, wrapping my arm around her back and forcing her cheek to my chest. Her leg draped over my thigh. If Tank or Aster or anyone else barges in, we’re dead anyway. Busted. Slaughtered. But the house is quiet for now, and Tank hasn’t bothered us in hours.
Two. Three. Could be four.
I lost count long ago.
“What’s your favorite flower?” I rasp, my voice hoarse from disuse. “Daisies? Roses?”
“Dahlias.” She happily sighs. “I hope I remember this moment in my next life. I want to plant a million of them so every time I look outside, I’ll see the rainbow and think of you.”
“Stop talking like that.” My soul aches, and my brain is just… tired. I’m so fucking tired. Because, while she searches for all things pretty, I pray for a way out, with or without Aster’s head on a spike. “We haven’t given up yet.”
“Haven’t we?” She exhales a breathy sigh and curls her lips into a sweet smile. Dropping her hand again, she goes back to tracing patterns against my chest. “I have. Though I don’t want to call it giving up. I prefer taking back my power.”
“It’s suicide.” I swallow the poison those words put on my tongue. “Martyrdom. I don’t accept it.”
“How long do you think we have until Aster comes back?”
He’s out there. And knowing so eats at the lining of my stomach. We don’t have forever, and right now, I don’t have a way out. That shit chips at my soul.
Once that door opens, our decisions will be made for us. By then, I’m man enough to admit I might wish I’d honored her request.
If her death is inevitable, I’ll never forgive myself for allowing it to be at Tank’s hands instead of her own.
“We still have a while.” It’s a lie. But everything we are was built on the lies we love to tell. What are a few more? “You don’t have to worry yet.”
“I was annoyed by how handsome you were.” Her cheek shifts over my heart.
“That day at the funeral. I missed my brother so much, and I was angry at the world. Angry that he was gone, and furious that it wasn’t an accident like the cops and everyone said it was.
Then you turned up, and I knew you were who my brother warned me about.
” She tilts her head back and searches my eyes.
“I hated you on sight. Wanted to kill you. But damn, it bothered me how handsome you were.” She snickers, soft and breathy, and trails her fingertips over my stomach.
“It was cruel to make me want you and want to hurt you at the same time.”
“Kind of how I felt.” I press a long, desperate, aching kiss to her forehead. “I was there to steal from you, but all I could think about was how pretty you are.”
“Damn hormones and impulsivity.” Her breath hitches on a watery laugh as she works hard to lock her bubbling emotions away. Even now, in what may be her final hours, she insists on shielding me from how truly terrified she is. “I don’t regret it, though. I don’t regret letting you into my life.”
“If you’d followed Ryan’s instructions, you’d be safe right now.”
“No.” She sniffles, her jaw trembling with the fear flooding her veins. “If I’d followed his instructions, I’d be in hiding. That’s not safe. It’s just…” She exhales a deep sigh. “It’s just hiding. If I’d gone, I wouldn’t have met you.”
“Hardly worth the tradeoff.” I draw a heady breath, expanding my lungs until they ache.
“I’m not a good person, Nova. I’m no better than Tank, really.
I’ve hurt people. I’ve intimidated. I’ve killed.
” I know how easy it is to end a life. How violent it can be, or how gentle, depending on the circumstances.
“Scarlett was caught up in some stuff a while back.” I lick my lips and swallow.
If I don’t, I’m afraid I’ll choke on the dust in my throat.
“She’d met this guy who was into some bad shit. She needed help, but…”
“You saved her.” Without even knowing the story, Nova jumps ahead with assumptions. “Whatever happened, however it ended, you saved your sister. You’re her hero.”
“I hurt the guy who hurt her,” I admit, my voice barely more than a whisper. “And then I hurt him more, until his bowels gave out and his brain snapped. I hurt him until he begged for mercy.”
And then Scarlett ended his life.
She, too, took back her power.
“It became a thing of legend in some circles. A threat that brought men like Aster into my life.”
“You saved her,” she repeats firmly. “And you said it yourself: she’s thriving, surrounded by people who love her. She’s independent, and capable, and brave. You made it so.”
“Aster knew what we’d done,” I murmur. “Worse, he had proof that would get Scarlett in trouble. That’s why I agreed to this job. That’s why I was the guy who came into your world and lied. He liked my brand of pain.”
I need to confess my sins. I’m desperate for her to know what I am before our time is up.
“I’m just like his other guards, Nova. I’m cruel and mean and what nightmares are made of. You only like me because your hormones are tricking you. But the things you think about Tank?” I pull back to search her eyes. “Someone else thinks those of me. I’m not better than he is. I’m the same.”
“You saved your sister,” she presses stubbornly. “And you committed acts ordered by someone else. Then you quit.” With a grunt of pain and a shaking support arm, she pushes up and rests her knee against my ribs. “You quit that world, and you created something better. Forgive yourself.”
“No, I—”
“For me.” She takes my hand in hers and swipes her tender cheek on her shoulder. “Forgive yourself for me. Because when your time is up… in seventy years from now, I’d like you to find me again.”
“Nova—”
“I’m gonna be where the good people go. In the clouds with my family, watching while you live your life and buy a house next to your sister’s.
She’ll marry a douchebag.” She releases a shaky laugh.
“And you’ll sulk about it. You can do for Scarlett what Ryan wanted for me.
Weird codependence, but beautiful, peaceful contentment. ”
“There is no peace for me if you’re gone.” I caress her jaw and will my heart to slow. To calm. Because if it stops before I get her out, this was all for naught, anyway. “If you give up and die here, then I’m lying down right beside you. I won’t leave without you, Nova.”
“You so willingly choose to break a little sister’s heart?” She swipes the tears from the edge of her jaw. “You have the power to save her again.”
“You’re asking me to sacrifice you!”
“This is how things are meant to be.” She glances down between us, so I follow her gaze and find my exposed ankle.
“Nova—”
“We’re running out of time.” She reaches for my knife.
“No.” I slap my hand over hers, trapping her in my palm while she traps the blade in hers.
“Time is not in our favor,” she whimpers, choking on a hitching breath. “If he comes back before we’re done, we trade what could have been a peaceful goodbye for something so much worse.”
Where’s my third option? Where the fuck is it!
“I don’t want to look into Tank’s eyes when I die.
” Fresh tears spill onto her splotchy cheeks.
“I don’t want it to hurt. And on the off chance there’s nothing else after death—no heaven, no clouds, no eternity where I get to dance amongst the dahlias and watch you live your life—I don’t want his eyes to be the last I see before everything goes black. ”
She twists her hand, pulling, maneuvering, escaping my grip. And then she turns her hand over and reveals my knife pressed to her palm.
“You can close your eyes, if you want.” She stares down at the handle, massaging the switch on the side until the blade springs free and the sound that once comforted me, an assurance of protection, becomes the reason bile burns my esophagus.
“You can plug your ears and turn away.” She brings shaking, unsure eyes up to mine. “Any tips? I can’t mess this up. But if there’s a way to do it so it hurts less…”
A deafening boom rocks the door and brings us around in horror.
“Time’s up!” Tank calls. “My turn.”