She studies me for a long moment, the silence stretching between us like something fragile. Finally, she exhales. “What happens now?”
“I clean up the rest,” I say simply. “I sent someone to deal with the bodies from the boat.
The drugs are secured and out of reach. Once everything is tied up, I’m done. No more Assembly. No more running. No more looking over my shoulder.”
“And after that?” Her voice softens, her gaze steady.
I meet her eyes. “After that, I start over. For us.”
I think I can live on a professor’s salary and the chunk of money I have stashed away from my years of illegal activity. The thought makes me huff out something close to a laugh. An honest living.
The only thing I’m interested in building now is a life with her.
She doesn’t say anything right away, but the tension in her shoulders eases just slightly. I reach out, brushing a strand of hair from her face, my fingers skimming the curve of her jaw.
“This is why I did all of it, Kruz,” I murmur. “So you’d never have to live in fear. So we’d never have to live in fear.”
It’s at that moment that I think she understands exactly what she means to me, and how long I’ve been playing this game just to keep her.
Whether she wants to admit it or not, she has always been mine.
She leans into my touch, her eyes shining with something I’m not sure I deserve.
But I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to.
23
GAME OVER
KRUZ
Ezra isn’t likeanyone I’ve ever known, and I’m convinced there’s no one else in the world like him.
He’s the storm that tore across the island, dark and unrelenting, ripping through my life with no intention of leaving it the same.
And maybe I should be scared—terrified, even—but I’m not.
Not anymore, anyway.
He makes me feelalivein a way that terrifies me, sure, like standing at the edge of a cliff and knowing you’ll jump, not because you want to die, but because the thrill of the fall is worth it.
There’s something unhinged about the way I crave him, something raw and desperate.
It’s not just love—it’s obsession.
A need so sharp it cuts me, leaving me bleeding and still begging for more.
An obsession matching the one I know he has for me in return.
He sees me in ways no one else ever has, and he doesn’t flinch at the messy, broken pieces of me.
If anything, he finds them appealing.
I felt this way even when I thought I hated him, even though I didn’t want to admit it to myself.
But now that he’s bared his soul to me and laid all his secrets out on the table? Ripped his own life apart just to put it back together in a way that I can fit into it?
Game over.
