“Maybe we should quit talking about this,” he suggested, and I did not like that.
I didn’t because he clearly had some issue with this, an issue with something that might not be natural to me, but was not only natural but essential to him, he’d told me he thought he was a monster, and there was no way the things I was saying shouldn’t be getting in.
Unless he’d built a wall to letting them in.
“Abel—”
“We’re movin’,” he declared.
“No, we need to talk about—”
“What I mean is, we’re movin’. From Serpentine Bay. Just you and me. Not my family. Yours can escort us, act as guard close to wherever I find for us to settle that’s out of the way and safe, but we’re goin’. And I’m sorry, Lilah, but that means you gotta leave your life behind and you need to start doin’ that while I look into finding us a place that’s safe.”
I stared at him, my throat getting tight.
It got tighter when he finished, “We’ll also leave behind your dad and his boys when we get to a place we can do that. It won’t be safe for them to know where we are either. But the way your dad is with you, he’s gonna have to have a part in gettin’ you where you’re goin’ and I gotta give him that. But he won’t be goin’ all the way.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked on a horrified whisper.
“This shit that’s goin’ down, it isn’t a surprise,” he explained. “I’ve had decades of premonitions that something like this was gonna happen. Now it’s happening. And the target isn’t my family. It’s you and it’s me. As much as I love them, as much as I owe them, as much as they’re a part of me, somethin’ in me knows I got one priority. You. I gotta focus on keepin’ you safe. I cannot focus on keepin’ everyone safe. But I gotta find a way to make them safe, and turn my focus solely to you, which means getting them out of danger. And that means us out of their lives.”
I couldn’t believe this.
“But that…that…” I shook my head. “That will destroy them.”
All of them. Jian-Li and my father especially.
His jaw got tight even as he replied, “Yeah, I know. Didn’t say I liked it, but it has to happen. They may be destroyed, but they’ll be it breathin’.”
“Abel, I don’t think—”
“Need you at my back with this, Lilah.”
I threw out both hands. “But I’m not sure I agree with you.”
“They’ll be back,” he whispered, his voice nearly a hiss, the sound crawling up my spine. “Not four of them. Not six. More. A lot more. My brothers, they can take care of themselves one-on-one. Two-on-one, that’ll get dicey. More? No fuckin’ way. These fuckers have power and speed, but they also got skill. I want my brothers to find women. I want them to make babies. I want them to live lives where they aren’t movin’ around every few years, protectin’ me so no one will notice them age, but me not. I want them settled. I want them happy. I want them alive.”
Oh God, I got him.
I so got him.
And what I got broke my heart because he was right.
We had to go to keep the people we loved safe.
“Okay, baby,” I said quietly.
“You’ll have my back?” he asked tersely.
I nodded.
“With your dad?”
I swallowed through the lump in my throat.
God, Daddy.
He’d hate it. He was going to lose it when it was suggested.
But he’d give into it. He’d give me anything.
I nodded again.
“I fuckin’ hate this for us,” Abel said low, his voice vibrating with the depth of that hate.
“Me too,” I agreed, my voice shaking with the depth of my emotions, all of them.
“Found you, knew in my gut this is what we’d face. But wish like fuck I could give you somethin’ else. Family. Laughter. Happiness. Peace. Us just settling in, gettin’ to know each other, building a life together with your dad and all that comes with you, with my family and all that comes with me. But we can’t have that unless I know the threat is gone.”
“Okay,” I agreed again.
Abel came to me and pulled me tight into his arms.
“I hate this for us,” he murmured into the top of my hair.
I wrapped my arms around him and repeated, “Me too.”
He held me close.
I did the same.
I felt him take in a deep breath before he muttered, “French toast.”
I closed my eyes hard, opened them, forced lightness in my voice, suddenly not hungry in a way I didn’t think I’d want to eat again for the rest of my life, and replied, “Works for me.”
* * * * *
“That shit is not gonna happen,” Xun declared fiercely.
In fact, his fierceness was clogging the room.
I curled my fingers tighter around Abel’s thigh.
He’d just told his brothers, my father, and his boys what was going to happen. That being, Abel was going to search out a house somewhere far away and remote, Dad and his crew were going to take us almost there, then peel off, leaving us behind and leaving all of them without anyone knowing where we were.
“We’ll come back when this shit gets sorted, Xun,” Abel assured. “We’ll find you.” His eyes swept the round table in the private room in Jian-Li’s restaurant where we were all having lunch, before he finished, “All of you when it’s done.”
“And what if it gets done in a way that there’s no you to find us ’cause you got no one takin’ your back?” Snake asked. “How will we know what happened to Lilah?”