I don’t hold back, I don’t mince words or emotions. I’m all-in with Adrian. So very all-in. “I was thinking,” I say, “that I love you too much to see you end up in jail and dead.”
He breathes out and presses his forehead to mine. “That’s a mistake, Pri,” he whispers, and the words cut me. I’m all out there, I’m all-in, and he tells me it’s a mistake?
Pain spikes in my heart with the unexpected response. We were together. We were done with obstacles. And now this. I lean back to study his face, to question him, but that action is never fully realized.
The engines roar to life, and Adrian is kissing me again, stealing my questions and objections with his skilled tongue. And when our lips part, he pulls me into a nook of two connected private seats.
I’m bothered by the confusing messages he’s just delivered, by the push and pull of our passion, but the plane is flying down the runway, ready to lift off at any moment. I quickly settle into a window seat, with Adrian protectively to my left, as we both buckle up, and just in time. The plane is lifting off. Walker Security has wasted no time getting us out of Texas and I’m reminded of the hitlist.
Waters wants to kill us.
And it seems that he’s managed to corrupt everyone in my life that isn’t on this plane right now.
Chapter Ten
ADRIAN
Tonight was a reality check.
When I walked onto the plane, I was of the mind that Pri and I have to face the facts and deal with them accordingly. I’m touched by the devil. He will never let me go. I killed my brother. I will never be able to escape that fact. Waters will hunt me down. If Pri’s with me, he’ll hunt her down. Thus why my moral obligation to protect Pri has to come before my desire to be with Pri.
I knew all of this.
I knew it well.
I still know.
And then she touched me. Then she’d flung her arms around me, and I was in heaven, not hell. I didn’t want to let her go.
I don’t want to let her go. But what I want doesn’t matter when it comes to saving her life.
The plane climbs through choppy air, jolting us right and left. Pri grabs my hand and I hold onto her when of course, that’s the wrong move. She turns to face me and the shaking of a hot pocket of air throws her forward, and her hand lands on my leg. I feel that touch like a hot wash of heat through my body, an imprint burning through me.
She stays just like that, hand on me, dark hair in perfect disarray around her heart-shaped face, her blue eyes filled with a different kind of turbulence. “What does that mean?” she demands. “That’s a mistake? I said I love you and you said that’s a mistake.”
I cover her hand with mine and I force myself to remember the devil’s hand on my life, on my throat, choking the life out of me, the hand that might as well be on her neck. “We’re on the run, living through hell together. You don’t know what you’ll feel when this is over.” Just saying the words guts me.
Her eyes go wide, a punch of pain in their depths that guts me all over again and when she tries to pull away, I hold onto her. “Pri—”
“You’re right. I got wrapped up in the heat of all of this. I just—let go.”
“I don’t want to let go,” I say because apparently, I have no fucking self-control where she’s concerned.
“I do,” she whispers. “I want you to let me go.”
I’m taken off guard. I’d expected her to ask me what happened. I’d expected her to want me to explain. I’d been prepared to do just that. Instead, it’s almost as if she knows I’m right, and on some level, she’d make the same decision. And I fucking hate it. It takes every piece of self-control I have not to drag her to me and kiss her again. Somehow, I do what she asks, what I know is right, and I let her go.
She immediately unhooks her seatbelt and stands. I catch her hand and she jerks against my grip and tries to pass me. The plane drops hard. She gasps and buries her face in my shoulder. Holy hell, I can’t let her go. I fold her closer, hold on tightly, and when the plane steadies, she lifts her face, her mouth a breath from mine. I want to kiss her. I’m going to kiss her, but she says, “No. No, I can’t do this.” She pushes off of me and then she’s in the aisle, walking away, toward the middle of the plane.