Chapter 23 #2
There is a very long pause.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I say to her.
The room is quiet for a moment.
Alana looks at me.
“Are you… breaking up with me for real this time?”
“It’s always been for real, Alana. I just came back to make sure you didn’t drag some other innocent person down with you. I came back— for Billie.”
Billie stares at me. That’s it. I’ve admitted out loud why I’m here.
Alana doesn’t move. I expect a reaction from her like the first time I broke up with her— knife throwing and a tantrum. Instead, there’s a softness that comes across her eyes. An understanding. She clears her throat.
Then, the moment passes and she’s back to business— slowly, almost lazily, her hand drifts to her jacket pocket. She doesn’t pull anything out. She just rests her fingers there, against the outline of her gun, so I can see it.
“You’re welcome to try,” she says pleasantly.
“Getting rid of me, I mean. If you want. But it’s going to be hard.
” She tilts her head. “The Twin Ledger has lookouts in this neighborhood. Probably in the lobby right now. You think you’re going to walk out of here with your faces and your names and get on a plane home? ”
I say nothing. Neither does Billie.
“You need new passports. New identities. I know the man who makes them— the only man worth going to in this part of the world. I know every exit the Ledger watches and every one they don’t.
I know how they communicate, how they move, how they think.
” She zips her bag with finality. “I’m not a liability. I’m the only reason you have a chance.”
She says it without ego, which is somehow worse. It’s just true, and she knows it.
I look at Billie.
Billie has been quiet through this, but she’s not the frozen kind of quiet anymore. She’s the thinking kind. The watching kind. She looks at Alana. She looks at me. Something moves across her face; a calculation.
“Rodrigo,” she says.
“Billie—”
“I know.” She says it gently. “I know. But Alana knows how all of this works,” Billie finishes.
“And we don’t.” She says it simply, not like she’s giving in, but like she’s reading off a list of facts she’s checked twice.
“She can get us passports, and in exchange she has a chance to get the other ring.” She glances at me, then at herself, then back at me.
“I trust her with this,” Billie says. She says it quietly, and she says it to me, and she holds my gaze while she does it— those enormous, honest eyes not blinking— and it lands somewhere in the vicinity of my chest with a weight I wasn’t prepared for.
She is owed a safe way out. That’s what I said. And this is what a safe way out actually requires.
I hate it.
“Fine,” I say, looking at Billie again. “Wherever you go, I’ll go.”
Alana, who has already unzipped her bag again and is now examining the hotel room’s complimentary fruit basket, looks up. “Fine what?”
“Fine, you come with us. Fine, you help us get new identities. Fine—” I cross the room in two strides and stand in front of her, and I want to make sure she is listening carefully to what I am about to say.
“You help us get clear, you get the other ring, and then we go our separate ways. I am not responsible for you. I am not protecting you. I do not owe you anything. We are done—” I search for the word. “Forever.”
Alana stares at me for a moment.
Then she puts a small pear from the fruit basket into her bag.
“Sure,” she says.
“I mean it.”
“Rodrigo.” She zips the bag closed. “I heard you the first time.” She swings the duffel up onto her shoulder, adjusts the strap, and looks at both of us with a bright, easy smile. “Now can we please go? In about thirty seconds Marco’s men are going to sweep this place.”
She walks past us toward the door, pausing to collect her jacket from the back of the desk chair— and, I notice, the notepad from beside the phone, which she apparently also wants.
The door swings shut behind her.
Billie and I stand in the middle of the ruined room, surrounded by the faint evidence of our packing. The room still smells like whatever expensive candle they’d lit at turndown service.
“You okay?” I ask.
Billie considers the question with the seriousness it deserves. “I mean,” she says, “I’ve had better evenings. As a general rule I try to end my nights before anyone dies, so this is already statistically unusual for me.”
She smiles at me, and my heart melts. “Did you really mean what you said? That you only came back… for me?”
I want to tell her I’ve been thinking of her since the moment I met her.
I want to tell her that she has beautiful eyes, and a kind heart, and a brave soul, and that I see all of this in her and more.
But there is no time, so instead, I tuck that piece of hair behind her ear again— the one that’s always getting loose— and say, only, “Sí.”
For a second, there is only the space between us— one that I close. It’s small enough now that I can feel the warmth of her, and the soft brush of her breath against my mouth.
And then…
I lean in and kiss her.
Even though I know I shouldn’t do it.
It’s the worst idea I’ve had all week, and I’ve recently walked into an international arms dealer’s compound. But kissing Billie? It needed to be done.
I hope that I’ve been invited, and— when she presses her whole body against me and wraps her arms around me— I’m sure that I have.
We are in a hotel room, which is convenient, because I could so easily move us toward the bed, a fact which isn’t lost on me.
In that moment, my world is Billie, and the idea of her, and the promise of what we could be, together.
We part.
Billie blinks up at me. There’s a shout from the hallway: Alana’s voice.
“Like, let’s go? I’d really like to stock up on some weapons before I try to cut off Marco’s finger.”
Billie grins, and it turns into a giggle. “She’s going to be a lot to deal with.”
“That’s alright,” I say, really meaning it. “Because I will be with you.”
Billie picks up her bag and settles it on her shoulder. She looks around the room as if saying goodbye, then back at me. “Let’s try not to die, I guess.”
I hold the door open.
Billie walks through it. I think about that kiss and I know— even if we do die— I can go a happy man.