Chapter Ten
Dean
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FOR THE BRIEFEST MOMENT, as I headed outside, I paused and turned to look back up at the hotel.
I didn’t want to leave. Something in me, some deep part of me, was telling me to turn around and go right back in there, not to walk away from her, not to leave her sleeping in that bed without me. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I knew I couldn’t pay any attention to it. I needed to let go of her, whatever we’d shared in those brief few hours we had spent together. She had just been the help I needed to get out of New York, and I wasn’t about to blow up my whole plan to go back and be with her.
Still. That level of attraction, of desire, it was something I couldn’t remember feeling before in my life – something demanding, commanding, it made everything else just vanish from my mind. All the logical thought, none of it mattered one little bit. I just wanted her. And I knew, if I went back to be with her again, what little chance I had of getting out of this mess alive would fall away for good.
Checking my wallet had enough cash in it to get me across town, I tried to remember the exact address of the safehouse I was headed to. Some place in Wrigleyville, if I remembered right. I had been out there a couple of times, but never had to find my way there without a phone or any other method of navigation.
The night was cold and dark, and the streets were sparse as I found my way to a train station to catch some transport that would take me closer to where I needed to go. Even as I walked away from the hotel, it was like some invisible string inside of me was being pulled tighter and tighter, determined to pull me back to being with her once more. And damn, I wanted nothing more than to just turn around and go to her and show her how much I had missed her, even in the small time I had been away.
It wasn’t as though I hadn’t been with women before. A good number of them, actually. It wasn’t like I didn’t have enough experience to be able to write this off as just a good hook-up, but my body was telling me something totally and utterly different – and it was driving me crazy to leave her back in that room when I felt I should have stayed there with her.
Maybe it was just because I had been away from women and any kind of indulgence of my desire for so long. It was just a reaction to not being able to express myself the way I wanted to, I was sure of it. Or maybe I was doing my level best to pretend there had to be a good reason for it, because otherwise, I’d have had to admit I felt something for her I had never felt before in my life, and it would be far too dangerous to consider anything like that.
I pushed all that down as I climbed onto the train, kept my head down, and did my best to stay aware of everything around me. I was exhausted from the stress of the day behind me, tired from how much had been asked of me, and I just wanted to go to sleep and forget any of it had ever happened. Well, apart from her, of course. Apart from Arianna.
I would be in a hell of a lot of trouble if anyone found out I had slept with her; I was meant to be focused on the job, and that didn’t involve sliding into bed with some random woman who I had plenty of my own doubts about. I knew I should have known better, but as soon as she kissed me for the first time, even though I had known it was just a play, I had to have her. I had to make her mine. I had to show her how much I wanted her, and I had to make sure I didn’t let her get away without tasting her properly.
I thought it would be enough to get it out of my system, but if anything, it just seemed to make it all the more difficult to put some space between her and me. My mind was clouded with my want for her, a dangerous problem for me right now. I needed to be on my game more than ever before, and there was no way I could do so if I was allowing my brain to linger on the way she looked when she’d come around my cock.
Eventually, the train pulled to a halt at the station I was planning to get off at, and I climbed out, scanning the quiet platform to make sure nobody had been able to track me this far. For the time being, at least, it seemed as though I had gotten away with it, not that I intended to get cocky anytime soon. I needed to keep my head in the game and remember who I was dealing with here. The Vogons weren’t the kind who just backed down when they were asked. They would put up a fight until the end. And I needed to be able to do the same.
I tried to ground myself once I was out on the street again, taking some time to point myself in the right direction; I was starting to remember what I was doing here, starting to recall where I was supposed to go from this point to get to the safehouse.
It crossed my mind briefly that I should have brought her with me. I had no guarantee she would stay safe where she was right now, and the thought of something happening to her made my chest tense. Rafael would have ripped me a new asshole, though, if I had brought someone like her back to the safehouse; we had no way to know if she was clean or not, and honestly, everything I had learned about her so far indicated to me she was anything but.
Still, I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. She had gotten me out of the mess I had been stuck in back in New York, and without her, I wasn’t sure I would even be able to walk on my own two feet right now. I owed her something, even if the people I worked with would never have approved of someone like her getting anywhere near our operation.
She would be fine. It was clear she was a hustler, a woman who knew just how to handle herself, and I had to give her credit. I wasn’t going to go second-guessing her ability to survive. I was sure she could talk her way out of anything that got thrown at her, the same way she had been able to get me out of New York and back down to Chicago. I had given her the hotel room for the night, that had to count for something, didn’t it?
I turned down the last side-street, and found myself face-to-face with the safehouse I had been looking for. I recognized it at once, even though it was specifically built to fade into the background as much as possible. I felt a flood of relief hit me, glad I had made it to somewhere I could call home. I didn’t have to play the part I had been hanging onto since I moved out to Terrence and his gang – I could be myself again.
If I even remembered who that was.
I approached the safehouse, knocked three times, and waited for a response. One came after a few moments, a man appearing at the door.
“Name?”
“Dean,” I replied. “I’ve been—”
“Come in,” he replied, without letting me get another word out. “Rafael is expecting to hear from you. I wouldn’t keep him waiting any longer.”
I nodded and stepped inside the house. It wasn’t much of a place, but damn, it felt a million times better than anywhere I’d been in the last few months. I let out a sigh of relief, not realizing until that moment just how much I needed to leave the version of myself I had been hanging onto for dear life behind. Yes, there was still a hell of a long way to go before I could fully allow it to slip through my fingers, but I would take anything I could get.
“Top floor bedroom has the phones,” the man told me, gesturing upstairs; I took them two at a time, practically racing up to speak to Rafael. I knew, though he would never have allowed anyone to see it, he would have been worried about me. He must have known I had managed to make it out on the flight to Chicago, and I was sure he would have heard about me booking into the hotel. I just had to pray he hadn’t picked up on the part where I had been with a woman, a woman he would no doubt have some serious questions about. I wouldn’t blame him – as far as he knew, I was working alone, but this changed everything.
I needed to keep my head in the game. I hadn’t spent the last few months getting close to Terrence just to allow some woman to throw me off my game, no matter how tempting it might be to do just that. I had to keep my focus, no matter what.
I made my way to the bedroom and pulled open the drawers attached to the desk; sure enough, they were stuffed with dozens of random burner phones, ready to be snatched up and used at a moment’s notice. I grinned and grabbed one, sitting down on the edge of the bed as I gathered myself.
There was so much I had to tell Rafael, I wasn’t even sure where to start. More than I could wrap my head around, that was for sure, more than I could make sense of. I wanted to spill it all, but I needed to be certain we weren’t being listened to or tapped as I told him everything.
I dialed his number from memory; I had memorized it in preparation for a situation just like this one, willing to rely on nothing but my wits to get me out of whatever mess I had found myself in the middle of. That was the risk you took when you accepted any kind of position like this one; you had to be ready for things to take a turn for the worse, to be out on your own without anyone to rely on but yourself. At least I was back in Chicago – that was going to make it easier to navigate whatever came next.
The phone barely rang once before he snatched it up to answer it; as soon as I heard his curt, sharp voice on the line, I felt something in me relax.
“Rafael, it’s me,” I greeted him.
“Dean,” he barked. “You’re still alive?”
“Just about,” I replied, and I rubbed a hand over my face. I needed to relax now I was out of there – it wasn’t easy for me to accept I had made it out in one piece, but I had, and nothing was going to change that.
“But wait until I tell you everything that happened,” I continued. I could practically hear his ears perking up, and I sank back onto the bed to rest my aching legs.