Page 15 of Endless Love

I let Charlotte go into the room first, and I can see her taking it in—the old carpet, the pressed-wood furniture, the stiff duvet on the one bed. She looks at me, and I let out a sigh.

“I’ll sleep in the chair. Or on the floor.”

She doesn’t argue, or tell me that I’ve been driving all day, so I should take it, or even give me a chance to try to convince her that she should have the bed. She just nods, sitting heavily down on the end of it, and I can see what looks like defeat cross her face as she unrolls the bag of food and takes out a single chicken tender.

I know I’m about to make that feeling even worse.

We eat in silence. I scarf down my burger without really tasting it, and Charlotte shreds the chicken more than she actually eats it. When the trash is thrown away, I wash my hands and come back out, noticing that she hasn’t moved at all. She’s just a statue, sitting at the end of the bed.

“We’re going to go to Vegas,” I tell her, and she looks up at me.

“Vegas?” There’s clear confusion on her face, and I nod.

“I have a contact there who can make fake identification for us. Licenses, social security, the works. Good enough that we can go anywhere, with no trouble.”

Charlotte swallows hard. “And we need that because?—”

“We’re going to have to scrub our old identities, Charlotte. Leave the country, probably, to be safe. Together, separately, whatever—the old Charlotte and Ivan, those are going to have to go, if we want to survive. This guy can do that for us.”

The look of horror on her face is frozen there for a moment, and I realize that she believed, somewhere deep down, that I was going to find some other way out of this for us. That she was going to get to go home, eventually. I don’t think it’s settled in yet that that’s impossible.

Unless I could pull off a miracle somehow, she’s not going home. And the feeling that I’ve failed her settles on me, a weight that I can’t shrug off. Leaving, starting over—that’s what I’ve always wanted, but she has a life that she didn’t want to shed. Maybe she wanted to lose pieces of it, but not all of it—not her friends, her job, or her home.

I’ve cost her all of that. And all I can think, as I look at the dawning grief and shock on her face, is that I have to find some way to get it back for her.

Keeping her safe isn’t enough. I need something more. Something that can undo what I’ve done.

“No.” Charlotte shakes her head frantically, breaking my train of thought. “No, I’m not doing that. I’m not going to just—become someone else. I won’t do it. We’ll have to figure something else out, Ivan. My life, everything—I can’t just walk away from that!”

I let out a sharp breath between my teeth. “You can’t escape the Bratva, Charlotte. My father is relentless and merciless. My oldest brother, Lev, is cruel. My other two, Niki and Ani, will do what he says. They’re my father’s spares, there to do as they’re told, and to follow Lev. That’s their purpose, beyond reminding Lev that he can always be replaced, if he puts a foot wrong.”

“That he can—” Charlotte’s eyes narrow, her forehead wrinkling as she shakes her head, running her hands through her hair. “This is awful, Ivan. Everything you tell me about your family is awful. This is?—”

“I know.” I breathe out heavily. “Believe me, I know. I’ve lived all my life with them, and I’ve spent a good bit of it plotting how I’ll escape, eventually.”

“And that’s what this is. Your escape.” Bitterness laces every word. “You’re just taking me down with you.”

“This isn’t how I planned it. And I never wanted to drag you down with me.” That, more than anything, I want her to believe. I want her to understand that I never,neverwould have sacrificed her safety, for anything. I would never have put her in this much danger, if I’d believed my family would come after her.

“So I’ll go to Bradley.” She spreads her hands out in front of her. “Maybe he’ll protect me from Nate. He wants the Bratva to go down. He?—”

“That’s not an option any longer.” I cut her off, before she can keep traveling down that path. “He’s not going to help you, Charlotte. He’s going to want information from you that you don’t have—he made that clear earlier today, when we met upwith him. He’ll probably hand you back over to Nate. It’s clear they have some sort of agreement. He might threaten you with all sorts of things, to try to get you to tell him what he thinks you know. He might not care enough to even put you in witness protection. And if he does?—”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?” she demands, her voice cracking slightly, and I run my hand through my hair.

“Noneof this is what I wanted, Charlotte. But yes, I thought Bradley was the best option. I thought he would help you, get you safe. But it’s clear he doesn’t give a shit. So even if they do put you in witness protection, I’m no longer convinced that’s enough to keep my brothers from getting to you. From finding you and using you. Charlotte, you don’t want to know what Lev will do to you?—”

“I have some idea.” She cuts me off, shoving herself up from the bed and starting to pace. “So—what? Now I’m dependent on you. I’m going to road trip with you to Vegas, where some man you say we can trust but I don’t know is going to get us new, fake identities, and then—” She spreads her hands out. “We ride off into the sunset? ‘The beginning of a beautiful friendship?’” The sarcasm in her voice, dripping off of every word, bites into me like acid on my skin. “I don’t believe this, Ivan. I don’t believe you wanted Bradley to help me. I don’t believe that all of this has been some massive fuck-up on your part, that you didn’t want this from the start! That this isn’t what you always intended to happen?—”

I jolt up from my chair, my anger rising to meet hers. I’ve been shoving it down all day, throughout one of the longest days I can remember having in recent memory, telling myself that I deserve every cutting word, every angry remark, every cold shoulder. And fuck, I know I do. But at the same time, she’s accusing me of things thataren’ttrue. And that pisses me off, because god knows I’ve done enough wrong that she can befurious at me for. She doesn’t need to be angry at me for what I haven’t done, too.

“I never wanted this,” I growl, pacing towards her. She holds her ground, eyes sparking angrily up at me, and I shake my head, my anger sparking to meet it. “This is exactly what Ididn’twant to happen. I knew I should have stayed away from you. I knew I was bad for you, that everything about me waswrongfor someone like you, but I couldn’t. I fucking couldn’t! From the moment I saw you at Masquerade, I knew?—”

Her mouth drops open, her eyes so wide that her eyebrows shoot up almost to her hairline, and I realize what I’ve said a moment too late. That it’s all coming out, and Charlotte is going to realize the extent of what I’ve done.

That because I let my mouth run away with me, because I let myself get angry for a second, I might have doomed her even more.

She’ll never stay with me after this. Not even long enough for me to make sure she’s safe.

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