Page 102 of Valentino

The plan is clean. Amanda will be safe. She disappears into a life without safe houses, bounty hunters, and a man whose name is now worth money to every desperate bastard with a gun.

"She won't leave," I say.

Bruno doesn't answer right away.

“What do you mean she won't leave?"

"I mean she won't get on the plane if I'm not on it."

"Then put her on the goddamn plane, Valentino. You're not asking her permission. You're keeping her alive."

He hangs up.

If I put her on that plane and stay behind, I become every person who's ever walked out of a room she was in. I become what she expects. She won't forgive it.

There's no version of this where I'm not the person who leaves.

I have until morning to figure out how to be the man who stays while still being the man who makes her go.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Amanda

The first thing I register is his heartbeat under my ear, steady and warm, and the second is that I don't want to move for the rest of my life.

I'm sprawled across Valentino's chest, one leg tangled with his, his arm draped across my back. Morning light slips through the gap in the curtains and lands on the ink spread across his pectorals, all those dark geometric lines rising and falling with his breath.

I've woken up next to men before. Plenty of them, if we're being honest, which I guess we are now. But usually there's a process. Hair check. Breath check. Figure out whether I look like a human being before he opens his eyes.

I haven't moved a muscle because this is the best feeling I've ever had.

I'd put it up against every campaign, every launch party, every champagne toast in every glittering room I've ever worked. It's not close.

"You're awake," he says.

His voice is rough with sleep, lower than usual.

I tilt my chin up. He's already looking at me, and he gives me an actual smile. Small. Unguarded. The kind I suspect very few people ever see.

"Did you sleep well?" he asks.

I nod against his chest.

"Did you?"

"Yes."

He says it easily, but I'd bet my entire next spring campaign budget that he spent half the night staring at the ceiling.

"I'll make coffee," he says, sliding out from under me. "Something to eat. Okay?"

"Okay."

He pulls on a pair of pants and disappears into the other room.

I stay where I am for a moment, staring at the dent his head left in the pillow. The sheets smell like him. Cedar, apparently, is an acceptable cologne note now. My standards have evolved. Or devolved. Jury's still out.

Eventually the cold air reminds me I'm wearing exactly nothing.