Page 145 of Carnal Urges
“I’m not hungry. I am tired, though. And I think it might be best if we didn’t talk about it at all.”
I say vehemently, “If they hurt you, I’ll kill every one of them.”
She closes her eyes and inhales slowly. Then she turns her head to the windows and gently pulls her hand from mine.
It feels like a kick to the chest.
“Sloane. Baby. Please talk to me.”
She moistens her cracked lips. Sounding a thousand years old, she says, “I can’t right now. I’m… I don’t know what I am. Mainly tired. I really need to sleep.”
All the breath in my lungs leaves in a rush. “Bloody hell. I’m so sorry. I had no idea they’d do this. I—”
“Stop.”
I clench my jaw and sit stiffly, waiting. It’s one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.
After a fraught pause, she opens her eyes and looks at the ceiling. She says flatly, “I’ve had some quality thinking time over the past few days.”
The tone of her voice makes my stomach roll over.
She’s ending it.
“Sloane—”
“Just let me get it out.”
“I can explain everything—”
“There’s nothing to explain. If we stay together, I’ll always be a target for stuff like this. First, it was MS-13. Now, it’s thegovernment. Someone will always be trying to get to me because of you.”
“Hold on. Just tell me what they told you.”
Her voice rises. “They threatened my dad and my siblings. And Nat, Declan. They threatened Nat. I can’t risk their safety. And I won’t go through something like that again.”
She stops to take a breath. “So I’m going to take you up on that promise you made that you’d let me leave if I asked you to.”
The floor drops out from under me. My entire body goes cold. When I speak, my voice is rough with pain. “Just like that?”
“It’s like that Sun Tzu quote you told me when you found me watching TV after you were gone for three days. ‘The wise warrior avoids the battle.’ I’m gonna sit this whole battle out.”
She turns her head and looks me square in the eye. Looks at me with piercing intensity.
My heart skips a beat. The cold in my body thaws, then turns boiling.
That wasn’t the quote I told her. I know it. She knows it, too.
She’s trying to tell me something.
But I need more information to understand what it is. I need to ask her more questions.
“Where will you go?”
“To see Nat first. After that, I’ll go back home to Tahoe.” A flicker of laughter shines in her eyes, but her face remains impassive. “It’s time for me to settle down with a real boyfriend, not one of you mafia types. Someone a little more boring.”
Boyfriend? Boring? She hates both those words. What the bloody hell is going on?
She sees my confusion. Moving casually, she encircles her right wrist with the thumb and index finger of her left hand. The other three fingers she spreads out like a fan.
