Page 56 of Smoke and Mirrors

“Goodbye, Molly!”

“Love you,” she calls sweetly before we hang up.

I stare at the phone for a minute. “She’s such a pain in the ass.” I laugh awkwardly, trying to fight through some of the tension I can feel swirling between our bodies.

“She’s definitely unique,” he agrees in amusement.

A small breeze whips through the open window, and I shudder, pulling my sweatshirt around my body.

“Come on, we need to get going.” He squeezes my hand with his, and I wind up the window.

He pulls off his jacket and then places it over my lap. I want to tell him I’m fine, but the heat from it instantly warms my body inside the cold car, and I relax into the seat.

He gazes at me longingly, smiles, then starts the car quickly pulling back onto the empty street. By this stage, I can tell he’s heading out of Washington. We drive through small surrounding suburbs and soon hit the open road.

“Where are we going?” I ask, turning my head to him and leaning it against the headrest.

His eyes stay focused on the road. The occasional car flashes by, but for the most part, it’s just us lighting up the darkness. “I don’t know.”

“How long will we be gone for?”

“I don’t know,” he answers again.

I’m beginning to become frustrated. “Will we have to keep running from them?”

“Lily…” I guess so is he, “… I don’t know. Okay?”

I clench his jacket in my fingers. “At least tell me this… why is this happening?”

His fingers tighten on the steering wheel, and his eyes continue to avoid even a glance at me.

“We get orders,” he says through gritted teeth. “We get orders. We follow them. We don’t ask questions.” He exhales sharply out his nose like an angry bull. “But I just disobeyed an order.”

I tuck his jacket in around my legs, not sure if I’m actually cold or whether it’s just the feeling of Kace around me, filling me with comfort and safety. It feels almost like a protective shield.

“What does this all have to do with me?”

He doesn’t answer right away. And the longer he stays quiet, the more I feel my hand itching to reach out and pull the door handle. Maybe I should take my chances with the asphalt rather than hear what he has to say?

“The order I disobeyed… was you.”

A shudder runs down my spine. “This is all because of me?”

He shakes his head, turning to look at me for the first time since we got back in the car. His eyes are so expressive, so beautiful yet so haunting.

Shadows fall across his face, but they seem to sparkle even in the small amount of light in the car. “At first, I thought it was,” he answers honestly, before moving his eyes back to the road. “You’re so exquisite, so smart, and so strong. Even before we spoke, I could feel a pull toward you that my mind couldn’t comprehend.”

My body buzzes at his admission, my senses all becoming electric.

“When I was told who your father was, I felt like it made sense. You’d pulled me in purposely. The way you walked, the quirks you had, the way you acted around me… all a conscious effort to attract a man like me and draw me in.” His eyes flicked to mine again. “But it was all you. It was just you being you, and fuck…” I blush as he shifts in his seat as though he’s suddenly uncomfortable.

“Kace…” I whisper.

“When I realized, in the apartment tonight, that none of this was a lie. That this shit between us is real…” He scrubs across his jaw with his hand, and I make a snap decision, reaching over and taking it in mine. He looks down at our hands as I link our fingers together, giving him the support I feel like he needs. “There’s something else going on here, Lily. Something bigger than us.”

I swallow tightly, forcing out the words that scare the shit out of me. “Then we need to find out what.”

His eyebrows raise, and a smirk touches the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, we do.”

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