Chapter 19 19

Chapter 19 19

Celine's POV

The door opened without warning.

I took Caelum’s gun from the coffee table and, shaking, pointed it at whoever was entering.
"Whoa, easy." Kent lifted his hands, and Ryker mirrored him. Both appeared to be exhausted, their bodies caked with a combination of dust and what might have been blood. "It's just us."

I released the gun, my hands shaking so violently I could barely hold it at all.

Kent's gaze smoked the room, coming to rest on Caelum slumped insensate against the sofa, then at me splotched with dried blood. Something I couldn’t put a name to flickered in his gaze.

“You ought go to home, miss,” he said softly. "This isn't your world. You've done enough."

"He got shot because of me." I tried to speak but my voice was hoarse from crying and not speaking for hours. "I'm not leaving."

"Miss Moretti—"

"Celine. My name is Celine." I rose, moving between them and Caelum as though I could really do anything to stop them if they decided they wanted to take him. "And I'm not going anywhere."

Kent and Ryker shot each other a glance. There was some silent communication between them.

He’s going to hate that you saw him like this,” Kent said finally. "Weak. Vulnerable. The boss doesn't do vulnerable."

"I don't care."

Ryker almost smiled. "She's stubborn. I like her."
Kent let out a long breath, raking a hand through his hair. "Fine. We need to check him over, make sure you didn’t miss any of your work. Not to be rude, but you’re not really professionally trained in field medicine.”

"I know." I fell back, at that too. "I did my best, but—"

"You kept him alive." Kent crouched beside the couch, feeling for Caelum’s pulse, examining his pupils, the bandages. That is further than most anyone has gotten. “These stitches are pretty good, actually.”

Pride welled within me in spite of everything.

They worked swiftly, inspecting the wound, applying new bandages with deft hands. Kent reached for an IV bag and needle.

“Fluids and antibiotics,” he said, reading my expression. "He's lost a lot of blood. This will help."

I’d watch them work, trying to remember everything in case I ever had to try it myself.
When they had finished, Kent rose and looked at me closely. "You love him."

It wasn't a question.

"Yes," I said simply.

"Even knowing what he is? What he does?"

"Especially knowing that."

Ryker grunted. "Told you she was different."

Kent ignored him. "It's not going to be easy. This life, it destroys people. Smashes all the good and nice and ordinary.”

"I know."

"Do you? Because when you’re in, you can’t get out. No returning to your dorm room and your classes and your regular life. You’ll feel you need eyes in the back of your head. Always wondering if there will be a day someone decides to use you to hurt him.”

"I know," I repeated firmly. "And I'm still staying."

Kent eyed me for a long second. Then he nodded slowly. "Alright. But we're staying too. Ryker and I will stand perimeter duty in shifts. You stay with him. If anything changes at all, if he gets worse, you’re calling us right away. Understood?"

"Understood."

They exited and I was back with Caelum. I sat back down on the floor by the couch and my hand fell into his, our fingers intertwining.
“You can’t get rid of me now,” I murmured at his limp body. “So you better get woke and deal with it.
\---

He woke up at noon.

I’d drifted off to sleep with my head on the couch edge when I felt his hand clasp mine.

My eyes flew open. "Caelum?"

His eyes were open, fever-glassy, unfocused but open. He winced as if in pain and then gradually turned his head toward my face.

"Celine?" His voice was hoarse, little more than a whisper.

"I'm here." I leaned closer, pushing his hair back from his forehead. "You're okay. You're safe."
He struggled to sit up, his face screwed with pain. I pressed him back down, gently but firmly.

"Don't be an idiot. You were shot. You need to rest."

"What happened?" He scanned the inside of the cabin as if it were possible he could not remember where he was. "Nikolai. The warehouse. Did we—"

"We escaped. You got me out. Kent and Ryker are here, keeping a lookout. Everything's okay."

His hand found mine again, crushed me in a tight squeeze like he needed to make sure I was actually real. "You stayed."

I nodded, tears threatening again. "Of course I stayed."

He stared at me as if I were something precious and horrifying simultaneously. Something he did not know the way to hold without breaking.

“You were supposed to hate me,” he said softly. "I dragged you into this. Into my world. You nearly lost your life on my account.”

"Yeah, well." I smiled despite the tears. "I'm dragging myself further in. So get used to it."

His thumb glided over my knuckles, a careful stroke despite the quaking of his hand. "Why?"
“Because I’m a moron who’s in love with her criminal professor.”

The words hung between us. I'd said it. Finally vocalized what I’d known for weeks.
Something cracked in his expression. Pain, and hope, and fear all tapping each other.

"You deserve better than this. Better than me."

"Probably." I leaned in, my forehead close to his. "But I don't want better. I want you."

"Celine—"

"No. “I am not letting you push me away again. You said losing me would be worse than dying. Besides, I’d fall apart without you. So we're both stuck, okay? We are now all in this together.”

He  pulled me down with his good arm, burying his face in my hair. I felt him shivering, his tears wet at my neck.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he offered, voice breaking. “How to be with someone without ruining them.”

“Then we will figure it out together.”

We lay like that for a long time, one of us holding the other and both of us damaged and afraid but still breathing somehow.
\---

Over the next few days while Caelum healed, we talked. Really talked. About everything.
He described his mafia childhood. Raised in violence, killing before he knew how to drive. His father was a tough man, cruel, but fair in his own way. By the time he'd died, at twenty five, Caelum had inherited everything.

“I didn't ask for this life,” he admitted, peering out the window of the cabin. "But it was all I knew. All I was good at."

He told me about Isabelle. How she had been everything he was not. Normal, pure, untouched by violence. She had studied literature at the Sorbonne, smiled at him across a crowded charity gala, somehow caught sight of something worth saving under all his darkness.

“She made me want to be better,” he said in a whisper. “Had me thinking I could just leave all this, start fresh. I was about to come clean with her. Ask her to marry me. Let the business be yours, then; and leave the work of God to Kent.”

"What happened?"

"Nikolai found out. He couldn't let me just walk away, couldn't allow me to have one weakness he couldn't control." His jaw clenched. "So he orchestrated the accident. Made it appear to have been drunk driving. She was already dead by the time I reached her.”

I grasped his hand and squeezed it gently.

“Then I became a monster,” he went on. "Stopped pretending to be human. Devoted 10 years making a case against Nikolai as he tried to ruin everything the Demos bastard loved. And I convinced myself that I was doing it for her. For justice. But in the end, I just needed him to feel the way that I felt.”

“And then I showed up looking like her.”

He turned to face me. "At first, yes. You were like, at first I thought you was a punishment. The universe having a mean sense of humor. But then you started to talk and you were not her at all. You challenged me. Refused to back down. Why did it make me feel things that I thought died 10 years ago.”

"What things?"

"Hope. Fear. Desire." His hand cupped my face. "You're not a replacement, Celine. You're something entirely new. Something I don’t deserve but can’t walk away from.”

I leaned into his touch. “I have something to tell you, too.”

"What?"

“I seduce you in your class.” The confession rushed out. "For revenge. My ex boyfriend slept with Amaya, and I heard she was your cousin or something, so when I figured I could get you to sleep with me, like me enough to ditch me, that would hurt her in some way. You were supposed to be corpse.”

He stared at me. Then, impossibly, he laughed. It was a pained sound and his hand went to his injured shoulder, but it was real.

"How'd that work out?" he inquired, eyes lighting up with amusement despite the pain.

I smiled sadly. "I fell in love instead. You can’t pretend to have feelings, it seems. Who knew?"
"So we're both idiots."

"Apparently."

He pulled me closer with his uninjured arm. "I love you, Celine Moretti. I don’t know how, I don’t know how to keep you from harm in my world, but I do love you.”

"I love you too."

We kissed, slow, deep and full of longing and fear. His lips were tender no matter how much hunger I could sense lurking below. I was careful with his injuries with my hands yet I wanted to scoop him up closer.

When we at last separated, we were both panting.

"What happens now?" I asked.

“Now we try to figure out how to bring this to an end.” How to prevent Nikolai from hurting anyone else.”

"How?"

Before he had a chance to answer, the door flew open.

Kent froze, his face draining of blood as he clutched a phone in his hand.

"We have a problem," he said. "Nikolai took Maddie. He wants a trade. The girl for the girl."

My blood turned to ice. "What?"

Kent pulled up a video on his phone. On a screen there was Maddie, bound to a chair with her face battered and tear-streaked.

"Celine, I'm sorry," she sobbed. “I literally didn’t tell them anything, I promise, but they knew where to go to find me. They said they’d release me if you—“ Her voice was cut off someone yanked her head backward by the hair.

Nikolai’s voice came over the loudspeakers. “Morano, You got your twenty four.” Girl Loves You, Girl Is Just Collateral Damage. Choose wisely."

The video ended.

I couldn't breathe. Maddie. My best friend. The girl who’d comforted me when I cried, warned me about Reed, and then done her best to keep me from getting into this very situation.
“We’re going for her," Caelum's voice was icy and ominous.

"How?" I turned to him, desperate.

He glanced at me and I could see the sum in his eyes. The strategy forming.

“By giving him what he wants.
I understood immediately. "Me. You want to use me as bait."

“But here, I have every variable in my hand.” He rose slowly, wincing but on his feet. "You'll be wired and armed, and my men will be all over the place. You will not be alone for any moment at all. I will not let the warehouse-type happen again.”

"And if something goes wrong?"

His hand rested on my face, thumb grazing across my cheek. "Nothing will go wrong. I promise."

I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe that he would be able to shield me and Maddie.

But I’d seen what Nikolai could do.
And I realized that promises didn’t always have to be delivered.