~ SASHA ~
Zev staring at her and touching her was… overwhelming. His gaze followed her like she was the only thing in the world, his ice-blue eyes fixed, pupils dilated. And she shivered, her skin pebbling with an intoxicating mix of desire and thrill. She'd had to close her eyes when his fingers t her skin, slid into her hair, because her scalp prickled and she was at risk of embarrassing herself.
She bit her lip to keep herself steady, and just breathed. But then she caught that sll of him again.
Shit, she was a ss. A lting, glowing ss.
Then he whispered her na and she almost whimpered. She'd ached to hear that, that tender, breath of her na, the way he used to say it, in her ear, in her hair, against her skin—for five years.
Her hand slipped up to catch his, to stop him, and he froze. She gave a little laugh. She wasn't even looking at him and she could feel him. Could still read him like a book.
He was terrified she was going to say no. And that was what convinced her.
This was still Zev. Her Zev. Zev was good. She knew that. Knew it like she knew her own na. What he'd done… what had happened that night… there had to be a reason.
So when she opened her eyes and his locked on, she sucked in another deep breath of his sumr rain-shower sll and nodded. "Okay," she said.
It shouldn't be so easy to throw her entire life away with one word.
But it wasn't, really. She wasn't throwing it away on a word. She was throwing it away on a man.
If she was a fool for that… well… she'd tried. She'd tried to get over him. To escape his mory. To convince herself that what they'd had had been nothing but teenage fumblings and infatuation.
But it hadn't worked. And now he was here.
"Okay," she said again, clearer this ti. "Tell what to do."
He stared at her like he was going to kiss her and for a mont she held her breath. But then he blinked and stood—hunched, because the van was a good foot shorter than him—and offered her a hand to help her out of the seat.
"When I open the door, we walk, just like you would any other day. As if none of this has happened, okay?"
She nodded, swallowing. She was really going to do this.
"I'll secure the apartnt, but you don't say a word—not a single word—about leaving or what's happened tonight. You can talk. You talk about seeing again. You talk about your questions about us, anything… normal. Be angry if you're angry. Be hurt. Be scared. Whatever. But you don't talk about the fact that we're packing a bag, or that I'm making sure there's no one around, okay?"
She nodded again, hysterical laughter bubbling in her throat at the sudden ntal image of herself standing over a pile of underwear and socks, berating him while he ran through the apartnt with a gun, like a hero in a bad cop movie.
"When the ti's right, I'm going to pretend to get mad at you and leave. I'm not leaving, you understand? But if you make any noise after that it has to sound like you're hurt and pissed off that I left you again. You can't… Sash, you can't listen to anything I say when that's going on, you understand?"
"You think they have my apartnt bugged?"
He snorted. "If they don't, soone dropped the ball. But I don't know if they'd already done it earlier, or if they rushed in tonight. So, we act like they can hear everything in there, okay?"
She nodded, her heart hamring on her chest.
He took her hand and she breathed in sharply. "When I leave, I'll take the bag. You make whatever noise you want about leaving, then you co out into the hallway like you're mad and looking for . Then we run like hell."
She nodded again, dumbly. "Where are we going?" she asked.
That was the first ti his gaze shuttered. Fear trickled through her when he swallowed and looked down, but he t her gaze before he spoke, rubbing his jaw that was shadowed with stubble.
"I'm taking you ho," he said carefully.
Her face crumpled. "I can't go ho, Zev. My parents split up. I don't have—"
"Not your ho, Sash. That's not safe. They'd already have eyes on your parents. I'm taking you to my ho."
She frowned. "That little town in the middle of nowhere?"
He nodded, but his eyes were guarded. But he didn't give her ti to think that through. He reached for the handle of the van door and murmured under the roll and creak of it, "it's ti. We need to get moving. Rember, talk."
She nodded, then let him lead her out of the van and across the parking lot to the stairwell.
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