I can’t see his face, but I feel Kage frowning at me in the dark. “You threatened to shoot a sheriff because he annoyed you.”
It sounds bad when he says it. I get a little defensive. “He’s been driving by my house at all hours of the day and night for weeks—”
He growls, “Hold on. What?”
“See? Annoying. And he said some insulting things about you, and about me, and wouldn’t leave when I asked him to, and just overall acted like a prize-winning dick.”
Kage is silent for a while, simmering. “Thank you for telling me. I’ll handle him.”
My eyes widen. “By ‘handle him,’ do you mean…”
“I mean your man will handle it. You don’t need to worry about him bothering you anymore.”
With a grumble, he lays his head back on the pillow and slides his arm underneath my neck. We lie in silence for a while, until Kage’s breathing returns to normal.
Then I whisper, “Don’t hurt him, though. Okay?”
He exhales in a heavy rush.
“I don’t want that on my conscience. Promise?”
“You pointed a gun at him, but I can’t?”
“Mine wasn’t loaded. Yours would be.”
I can feel his outrage. “Your gun isn’t loaded? Why the hell not?”
“I only have it because my dad left it here. And this is a town of only about four thousand people, with very low crime. And I have a big dog.”
Kage’s laugh is sour. “The dog who greeted me with a wagging tail when I picked your back-door lock, then promptly went to sleep on the sofa?”
“Yeah. That’s Mojo. I know he’s not exactly on high alert.”
“No, he’s on Prozac.”
“He’s a happy dog!”
“Happy dogs don’t make good guard dogs. We should get you a Rottweiler.”
I picture a two-hundred-pound furry monster baring sharp, saliva-dripping fangs at me while I’m sleeping. “Hard pass.”
“Then at least load your gun.”
“I don’t have any ammunition.”
Kage’s sigh conveys his extreme disappointment in my lack of preparation for a home invasion.
I keep my tone light when I say, “I’ll be safe for at least the next week, anyway. So there’s that.”
Another dissatisfied grumble. The arm around my body squeezes me tight.
I know his mind is working, running over what I said. I didn’t mean it as a rebuke, but it might’ve sounded that way. Like I was blaming him for not being here more.
Like I was trying to make him feel guilty.
When I open my mouth to explain, he interrupts me.
“I know you’re not giving me shit.”
I whisper, “Okay. Good.”
But there’s tension in his body. I’m pretty sure I can hear him grinding his teeth.
“You’d be justified, though,” he says, his voice low. “This arrangement can’t be easy for you.”
My heart flutters. I bite my lip, trying not to ask him what I want to ask him, but finally give in to the urge and say it anyway. “Is it easy for you?”
He inhales and exhales slowly, turning his face to my neck. Close to my ear, he whispers, “It’s fucking torture, baby.”
I wait, but he doesn’t offer to change things. He doesn’t offer to fix it. No matter how difficult it might be for us to see each other only every once in a while, it looks like that will continue.
Because for whatever reason, Kage doesn’t want to change the status quo.
For my safety, supposedly. But aren’t I just as vulnerable here, with the police breathing down my neck and my stalker ex-boyfriend plotting who knows what in retaliation for me pulling an Annie Oakley on him?
Maybe. Maybe not. I’ll never know, because he’ll never tell me.
That thought makes me unspeakably sad.
When I bury my face into the pillow, sighing, Kage whispers, “What if…？”
My eyes snap open, and my heart starts to pound. “What if what?”
“What if I moved you closer to me? New Jersey has some nice suburbs—”
“New Jersey?”
“Martha’s Vineyard, then. It’s gorgeous there.”
I’m trying not to get angry, but heat is already working its way up my neck. “It’s also in Massachusetts. You want me to move across the country and leave my whole life here just so I can live in a different state from you?”
“It’s only a five-hour drive from Manhattan.”
My voice rises. “Only?”
He exhales. “Fuck. You’re right. Forget it.”
I spin around in his arms and face him, staring at him through the shadows. His eyes are closed. His jaw is set. It looks like he’s decided this is the end of the conversation.
Guess I’ll have to set him straight about that.
“Kage. Look at me.”
Keeping his eyes closed, he says curtly, “Go to sleep.”
This bossy, hardheaded, infuriating man. The longer I know him, the more blood pressure medication I’ll have to take.
“No. We’re going to talk about this. Right now.”
“You know what the definition of a stalemate is? This, right here. We can’t fix this, no matter how much talking we do. So go to sleep.”
“Kage, listen to me—”
He sits up, pushes me onto my back, and straddles my body. Then he gets right into my face and starts shouting.
“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. The best thing, and also hands-down the fucking worst, because of who I am and what I do and all the shit that goes along with that. I can never have the white picket fence, Natalie. I can never have Sunday brunch with friends or Thanksgiving with the in-laws or picnics in the park or any of the other things normal people do, because I’ll never be normal.
“My life doesn’t belong to me, do you understand? I made a vow. I took an oath and sealed it with blood. The Bratva is my family. The Brotherhood is my life. And there’s no way out of it. Blood in, no out. Not ever.”
His voice breaks. “Not even for love.”
Pulse pounding, my whole body trembling, I stare up at his beautiful face and anguished eyes, so full of pain and darkness, and realize what he’s telling me.
We’re doomed.
I suppose I already knew it. This thing between us isn’t built to last. Aside from the logistics of trying to maintain a relationship while living three thousand miles apart, raw passion like ours isn’t sustainable.
The hotter it burns, the faster it flames out.
Add the mafia as the cherry on top of our fucked-up sundae, and you’ve got a tragedy in the making.
So what else is new? It’s not like my life so far has been a romantic comedy.
I reach up and frame his face in my hands, the scruff on his jaw rough and springy under my fingertips. “I hear you. But you’re forgetting something.”
He waits, tense and unblinking, his gaze drilling into mine.
I whisper, “I’m a ride or die. All in or nothing. It doesn’t matter where we live or how far apart we are. I’m yours. You make your vows in blood, but I make them with my heart. And my heart belongs to you now. I don’t need a picket fence or picnics in the park. I only need what you give me. And it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever known.”