back, “I will stab you in the heart with a cocktail fork.”
He pulls away, still cradling my face in his hands. His smile is achingly beautiful and sad.
“You’ve already stabbed me in the heart, thief. Now it’s just a matter of seeing how long it will take for me to bleed to death.”
We gaze at each other, all thoughts of the three staring women vanished. He sweeps his thumb gently over my cheekbone, then back and forth over my lips.
I blurt, “You wrote in your note that I make you want to live a different kind of life. Was that true?”
“Aye.”
“And…” My heart pounds so hard I have to take a breath. “And what if I asked you to do that? To give up the life you have? Would you do that for me?”
He answers without hesitation, his voice husky. “I would if you said you trusted me. I would if you gave me your whole heart. If you stopped holding back.”
His throat works. He moistens his lips. His voice drops to a whisper. “If it meant I could have you for good, I’d light my whole life on fire and walk away from the ashes.”
It sits there between us, crackling dangerously like a live wire.
He waits, tense and silent, staring at me. His hands tremble on the sides of my face. He murmurs my name, his voice so raw it guts me.
I almost say it.
I almost blurt, “Yes, I trust you, yes, I’m crazy for you, yes, let’s be together and tell the whole world to go take a flying fuck.”
But at that moment, the music changes.
“Let It Be” by the Beatles comes on.
An icy chill runs through me, raising the hair on the back of my neck and the skin on my arms in gooseflesh. It feels like my mother is reaching out to me from beyond the grave with a warning. I can almost hear her ghostly voice hissing in my ear.
Don’t do what I did. Don’t fall in love with a bad man, or you’ll wind up dead like me.
And just like that, the spell is broken.
I lean away from Killian, taking my face from his hands and facing forward in the stool to stare blankly ahead. My hands shaking, I reach for my wine. I drink it, trembling all over, stunned by how close I came to the edge of the cliff.
Stunned by how much I wanted to fling myself off it.
Beside me, he blows out a hard breath. His laugh is low and brittle. “Harley.”
The bartender snaps to attention when Killian calls his name. “What can I get you, boss?”
“Glenlivet. Three fingers. No ice.”
“You got it.”
We sit in tense silence, side by side, watching Harley get a glass and pour the liquor. As soon as he sets it down, Killian grabs it and shoots it down. He exhales, sets the glass back on the bar with a sharp thunk, and turns to me.
His voice is sandpaper rough. “Let’s not drag this out. I’ll leave tonight instead of tomorrow morning.”
I smother the little voice inside me screaming No! No! No! and try to keep my voice calm. “It’s not that I don’t want to trust you. It’s that I can’t.”
His laugh is bitter. “You can. You just choose not to.”
“Can you honestly blame me?”
He curls his hand around my upper arm and turns me to face him. His jaw is hard, his eyes are blazing with fury, and he’s never looked more handsome.
He snaps, “Aye, I can fucking blame you, because you know how good this is, but you’re too scared to give it a go.”
“Scared?” I repeat, my voice climbing. “More like smart. More like sensible!”
He leans in and pins me with his burning stare. He growls, “Bullshit.”
I blink at the vehemence in his tone. “Excuse me?”
“That’s total bullshit, and you know it. It’s an excuse.”
My voice rises even higher. “You’re a criminal.”
“So are you.”
“You’re a gangster!”
“And you’re a thief.”
I cry, “I do what I do to help people!”
He stares at me, all the tendons in his neck standing out and his nostrils flared. After a bristling moment of silence, he says, “Me, too, thief. Me fucking too.”
Then he jolts to his feet and stalks away through the crowd, hands clenched and shoulders stiff, turning heads as he goes.
Harley says gently, “Don’t worry about the drinks, sweetheart. This round’s on the house.”
He walks away, leaving me alone with the oddest sensation that I’ve just made a terrible mistake, only I can’t figure out why.