Page 72 of Obsession & Oath

Carmen’s eyes narrow a fraction. “You’reenjoyingthis, letting me shield you from all these women that want to make an honest man of you. But what happens when we go back? What happens when you’re on the other side of this? What’s left? For me?”

I open my mouth again, wanting to say something, anything to prove that we can find a way out of this, a way around the impossibility of a war neither of us had any say in. But there’s nothing that feels solid enough to hold onto.

“I don’t know,” I finally admit.

She exhales slowly, her eyes flickering away from mine for a moment like she’s processing something. Then she looks at me, really looks at me, and it’s almost too much.

“Whatcanit look like, Dante?” she asks quietly. “What does the future look like for us? When Leon sends me back, everything we’ve been pretending doesn’t matter will suddenly come crashing down around us, won’t it?”

I’ve been so caught up inthis—in us—that I haven’t even thought about what happens after. I don’twantto think about after. This is all I want. Just Carmen and walks through Montecroce and the press of her skin against mine.

What the hell am I doing?

“We’re not going back to Brooklyn for a while,” I say finally. “We don’t have to think about that now.”

“Yes, we do.”

All I can think about is what it feels like to have her here, to be with her in this place where we’re safe, where nothing matters except the two of us.

“Carmen,please.”

“Are you prepared to leave the Prince’s Guild?”

The question knocks everything out of me. I stare at her with open distress. “No.”

“Well, I’m not prepared to walk out on the Cartel.”

I look at her, trying to steady myself against the pull of everything she’s saying. But it’s hard to breathe with the weight of it all. I don’t know how to make any of this work.

“After everything they’ve done to you, expected of you—” I try, but Carmen’s expression turns murderous.

“Everythingthey’vedone?! I’myourprisoner, Dante.”

I gesture to the flowers in her hand, at the street around us. “Are you?!”

“Like you aren’t going to send me back to the dungeons the second another one of your friends comes to check on you,” she hisses back.

We’re standing so close together now that I can see the golden flakes in her caramel eyes as she is glaring at me. She’s so close, and yet a chasm seems to have opened up between us, one that I can’t help but long to close again.

Finally, I take a step back, my heart pounding harder than it should. “I don’t have an answer, Carmen. But I’m not ready to say goodbye yet.”

Her gaze softens just a bit, but there’s a flicker of something sharp and resolved in her expression, too.

“I don’t want to say goodbye either,” she whispers. “But I think we both know that sooner or later, we’ll have to.”

Chapter20

Carmen

Ican’t sit still.

My legs carry me back and forth across the room, each step an attempt to shake off the tightness in my chest, the knot of dread that’s been building ever since our conversation in Montecroce.

He hasn’t thought this through—thatmuch is clear. He’s been living in the moment, completely consumed byus, without once considering…how completely inevitably fucked this all is.

I should’ve known better. I shouldn’t have put off this conversation for so long. I just wanted a moment…okay, almost two months' worth of moments…where I didn’t have to think about it. I could just lose myself to this feeling.

Damn it. I’m as bad as he is, really.

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