Page 130 of Our Violent Ends
“What use is the gang’s survival ifyoudo not survive?” Benedikt cut in. “Listen to me, Mars. No matter how much they trust you, this is civil war. This city will overflow with casualties—”
Marshall threw his hands up. “You and Roma may run. You are Montagovs. I understand. Why should I follow?”
“Marshall—”
“No!” Marshall exclaimed, his eyes ablaze, not finished with his rebuke. “I mean it. Why should I? With all that I am promised here, with all the protection I have, why wouldIrun unless I was a coward? Why would I abandon such prime opportunities—”
“BecauseI love you!” Benedikt shouted. At once, it was like a dam in his heart had broken, smashing past every barricade he had built up. “I love you, Mars. And if you are gunned down because you want to fight a war that doesn’t belong to you, I will never forgive this city. I will tear it to pieces, and you will be to blame!”
Absolute silence descended upon the room. If Benedikt had thought it oppressive before, it was nothing in comparison to the weight of Marshall’s wide-eyed stare upon him. There was no taking it back. His words were out in the world. Perhaps those were the only words he had ever said that he didn’twantto take back.
“Good grief,” Marshall finally managed, his voice hoarse. “You had ten years to say something, and you choose now?”
And for whatever absurd reason, Benedikt managed a weak laugh. “Bad timing?”
“Horrific timing.” Marshall closed in with three strides, coming to a halt right in front of him. “Not only that, but you choose toblame mein a declaration of love. Didn’t anyone teach you manners? God—”
Marshall clasped his hands around Benedikt’s neck and kissed him.
The moment their lips pressed together, Benedikt was hit with the same rush of a gunfight, of a high-octane chase, of the thrill that came with hiding in an alleyway when the pursuit came to an end. He hadn’t ever thought much about the act of kissing, hadn’t much cared no matter who was on the other end of it. He had never craved it, had only thought about it like an abstract concept, but then Marshall leaned into him and his veins lit on fire, and he realized it wasn’t that he did not care. It was only that it had to be Marshall. It had always been Marshall. When Benedikt reached up and sank his fingers into Marshall’s hair and Marshall made a noise at the base of his throat, all that Benedikt could think was this was what it meant to be holy.
“Please,” Benedikt whispered. He pulled back for the briefest of moments. “Come with me. Leave with me.”
A breath jumped between them, an exhale into an inhale. Marshall’s hands trailed over Benedikt’s shoulders, down his chest, to his waist, gripping the loose fabric of his shirt.
“Okay.” His answer came shakily, the single word heavy like a sacrifice. It was a choosing—it was turning away from the commitment of family and following Benedikt wherever he was to go. “On one condition.”
Benedikt’s gaze snapped up. Marshall was looking at him with his eyes wholly black, pupils blown large, his expression pensive and serious.
“Anything.”
A grin slipped out. “Say it again. I didn’t pine all these years to only hear it once.”
Benedikt gave Marshall a shove—a force of habit, really, and Marshall stumbled back laughing.
“Idiot,” Benedikt chided. “In all these years, why didn’tyousay anything?”
“Because,” Marshall said simply, “you weren’t ready.”
Idiot,Benedikt thought again, but it was with such fondness that his chest burned with it, a red-hot iron of affection that branded every inch of his skin.
“I’ll say it however many times you want. I’ll romance you until you get sick of me. I am horrendously, horrendously in love with your dreadful face, and we need to go,now.”
The smile that Marshall made was something glorious, so big that it felt uncontainable by the room, uncontainable within the house.
“I love you just as horrendously,” he replied simply. “We can go, but I have an idea. How certain are you that my father is lying?”
Benedikt wasn’t sure if this was a trick question. He hardly had the time to reel from the quick switch in topic. “Entirely certain. I heard him say the execution order was his command.”
Marshall pulled at the cuffs of his sleeves, rolling them up to his elbows as he wandered about his father’s desk, eyes searching through its contents.
“If the order is still in effect, we’re dead if we get caught,” Marshall said. He withdrew a piece of blank paper, then a pen, and started to write. “But not if we overturn the order on an emergency command.”
“With what?” Benedikt asked, flabbergasted. He squinted at what Marshall was writing. “A permission slip for any officer who catches us?”
“A permission slip”—Marshall finished writing with a flourish—“approved byGeneral Shu. His stamp should be in his meeting room. Let’s go.”
Marshall was out of the room before Benedikt could even register the plan, digesting what they were trying to do. Benedikt’s ankle protested as he picked up speed too, catching up to Marshall in the long hall, winding around the house to come to the foyer.
