She wipes her face. Takes a shaky breath. “Enzo was coming back tonight,” she says again. Quieter now. Like she’s letting go of something.
“I’m sorry.”
She looks at me. “He’s not what you think. Neither of them are.”
“Maybe not.” I sit back down on the couch. “But that doesn’t change what has to happen.”
“I know.” She disappears down the hall. Comes back with a pillow and blanket. Different from the ones I brought her. These are plain, beige, forgettable.
“Saul?”
“Yeah?”
“If I have to leave.” She stops. Starts again. “Will you tell him? Enzo? That I didn’t want to go?”
She’s asking me to deliver a message to the man she loves. The man who isn’t me. “I’ll try,” I say.
She nods. Disappears into her bedroom. Closes the door.
I sit on her couch. The apartment is quiet. I should make calls. Start the relocation process. Do my job.
Instead, I pull out my phone. Stare at the screen. Put it away. Sit there trying not to think about the fact that she asked me to tell another man she loved him.
Trying not to name the feeling in my chest that’s been there for weeks, growing every time she laughed at my jokes or looked at me like I might be someone worth keeping.
She asked me to tell him she didn’t want to go.
Not I love you. Not tell him I’m sorry. Just I didn’t want to go.
Like she knows he’ll already know the rest.
Stevie Reeves is in love with two men who could get her killed.
And I’m sitting on her couch, making sure she survives the night, knowing I’d do anything to keep her safe.
Even lose her. Even watch her love someone else. Even break my own heart in the process.
I’ve relocated forty-four witnesses. Watched them leave behind lives, loves, everything that mattered.
I’ve never felt like I was losing something too.
Chapter Twenty-Three
STEVIE
The apartment doesn’t feel like mine anymore.
Four hours ago it was ours. Me and Enzo and his terrible eggs and the kind of morning-after glow that makes you think maybe you’re not a complete disaster.
I agreed we would leave. Tonight.
Now it’s a crime scene. Somebody call CSI: Witness Protection Edition. We’ve got evidence everywhere. His mug. His smell still clinging to my couch. The indent in my sheets where a man who kills people for a living held me like I was something precious.
And Saul Bennett, U.S. Marshal, Man Who Brings Teal Blankets, standing in my kitchen making coffee like he didn’t just shatter my entire existence.
Cool. This is fine. Everything’s fine.
I’m still wearing Enzo’s shirt because I’m a well-adjusted adult who definitely doesn’t use stolen clothing as emotional support.
