Chapter 78 -
That pulled a real laugh out of him, short and surprised and a little bit broken. When he opened his eyes again, there was something different in them. Something lighter. Like a door that had been locked for years had finally swung open just a crack.
“You are drunk,” he said, but there was no heat in it this time. Just a kind of fond exasperation that made Nia’s stomach flip.
“I am,” she agreed. “But that does not make this any less real. Tomorrow morning, when I am sober and my head is pounding and I am mortified that I showed up at your door at two in the morning with a bottle of whiskey, I am still going to mean everything I said tonight.”
“How do you know?” Leo asked. His hand moved from her back to her face, cupping her cheek with a gentleness that seemed impossible coming from a man who killed people for a living.
“Because I have been meaning it for weeks,” Nia admitted. The whiskey made her honest, stripped away all the careful walls she had been building to protect herself. “I have been trying not to care about you. Trying to remember that you kidnapped me, that you are keeping me prisoner, that you are dangerous and violent and everything I should be running away from. But I cannot stop caring, Leo. I have tried. It does not work.”
Leo’s thumb brushed across her cheekbone, his touch so careful it made her want to cry. “You should run,” he said. “You should be terrified of me.”
“I know,” Nia said. “But I am not.”
“You should be,” Leo repeated, but he did not let go of her. If anything, he held her closer, like he was trying to memorize the feel of her in his arms.
“Well, I am terrible at doing what I should do,” Nia said. “Ask anyone. Ask Isadora. She will tell you I have never made a smart decision in my life.”
“This is definitely not a smart decision,” Leo agreed, but there was almost a smile on his face now. Small, barely there, but real.
“The best ones never are,” Nia said. She was swaying again, exhaustion and alcohol catching up with her now that the adrenaline of confronting Leo was wearing off. Her eyes felt heavy, her limbs loose and uncoordinated.
Leo noticed immediately. His hand moved from her face to her shoulder, steadying her. “You need to sleep.”
“I do not want to leave,” Nia said. The words came out before she could stop them, honest and a little bit pathetic. “I do not want to go back to my room and lie there alone thinking about everything I said and everything you said and wondering if tomorrow you are going to pretend this never happened.”
“I could not pretend this never happened if I tried,” Leo said quietly. “You made sure of that.”
“Good,” Nia said. Her eyes were closing on their own, her body giving up the fight to stay upright. “That was the plan.”
She felt Leo’s arms tighten around her, felt him shift his weight to take more of hers. “Come on,” he said, his voice soft in a way she had never heard it before. “You can barely stand.”
“I can stand fine,” Nia protested, even as she let him guide her across the room. “I am standing right now. This is me standing.”
“This is you falling asleep on your feet,” Leo corrected. There was something almost tender in his voice, something that made Nia’s heart do strange things in her chest.
She felt the edge of a bed hit the back of her knees and then she was sitting, the mattress soft beneath her. Leo’s hands were on her shoulders, steadying her, keeping her from toppling sideways.
“Lie down,” he said.
“Is this your bed?” Nia asked, forcing her eyes open to look around. The room was spinning gently, everything soft-edged and blurry.
“Yes,” Leo said.
“I am in Leonardo DeSanto’s bed,” Nia said, and then she started laughing. It bubbled up from somewhere deep in her chest, hysteria and exhaustion and the sheer absurdity of the situation combining into something that felt dangerously close to tears. “If someone had told me two months ago that I would end up in your bed, I would have assumed they meant you were going to kill me and dump my body somewhere.”
“I am not going to kill you,” Leo said. His hands moved from her shoulders to guide her down onto the mattress, pulling a blanket over her even as she fought to keep her eyes open.
“I know,” Nia said. The pillow smelled like him, like tobacco and leather and that dark something-else that she still could not name. “You are going to let me ruin you instead.”
“Yes,” Leo said quietly. “I think you are.”
Nia wanted to respond, wanted to say something clever or meaningful or true, but her body was shutting down, pulling her under into sleep whether she was ready or not. The last thing she felt was Leo’s hand brushing hair away from her forehead, gentle and careful, like she was something precious.
Then everything went soft and warm and dark, and Nia stopped fighting it.
Consciousness returned slowly, dragging Nia up from the depths of sleep like she was swimming through honey. Her eyes opened to find herself still pressed against Leo’s chest, her arms still wrapped around his waist, his arms still holding her like she was something that might break if he let go.
She could feel his heartbeat. It was racing, pounding against her cheek where her face was pressed into the hollow of his shoulder. Fast and unsteady, like he had just run a marathon or faced down an enemy or admitted something he had spent years trying to hide.
Nia pulled back slightly, just enough to look up at him without letting go. The movement made the room tilt a little but she ignored it, focusing instead on Leo’s face. On the way the lamplight caught in his gray eyes and turned them almost silver. On the way those eyes were looking down at her, dark and conflicted and full of something that made her stomach flip.
“You should go,” Leo said. His voice was rough, scraped raw from everything they had said to each other. But he did not loosen his hold on her. His hands stayed exactly where they were, one pressed flat against her lower back, the other spread between her shoulder blades.
“I do not want to,” Nia said. The whiskey had burned off some of its sharpness, leaving behind a warm haze that made everything feel both more and less real at the same time. “I want to stay right here.”