All the Lies We Tell (Quarry Road #1)(87)

Niko stood, scraping the chair on the linoleum hard enough to almost knock it over. “She’s leaving tomorrow morning. She said she’d be at the airport by four. Does it really matter where she’s going? She’s still going to be gone.”

“That’s in about two hours,” Ilya said. “You should get your shit together and go after her. Fuck’s sakes, man. Don’t tell me you came back here and did all this just to let her go?”

Niko’s fists clenched, then unclenched. “She has the right to go wherever she wants. I know it’s what she wants, Ilya. She wants to leave.”

“She doesn’t want to leave you,” Ilya said. “And if you can’t see that, you’re an idiot. Now I really might punch you in your face, for being stupid.”

He might welcome the punch, if only because a fight would get rid of at least some of this anxiety. He put his hands on the kitchen counter, his back to his brother. “Shit.”

“Yeah, it’s a mess of it. You’d better figure it out.”

Niko looked over his shoulder. “She could be going anywhere. She didn’t say anything to you?”

“You always were the pretty one, not the smart one.” Ilya shook his head with a sour expression. “Because, right, Allie absolutely confided in me about her plans. Sure. Again, what the hell is wrong with you? She’s taking a trip, not moving across the world to join a commune.”

Niko frowned. “It was not a commune.”

Ilya waved a hand, clearly not caring. “Whatever. You’re afraid she’s going to do to you what you did to us, but that was you, not Allie. Go to the airport and find out where, how long she’ll be gone, when she’ll be back. But go after her, Niko. Or she will come back, but it won’t matter, because you’ll have lost her. And trust me, brother. You’ll spend a long, long time wishing you’d stepped up when you had the chance.”





CHAPTER FORTY-THREE


The drive to the airport normally took about forty minutes, with traffic, on the winding back roads from Quarrytown. At three in the morning, there wasn’t any traffic. The car she’d hired to take her made the trip in twenty-five minutes, and the driver didn’t speak, so that was a bonus. Alicia wouldn’t have been able to hold much of a conversation.

All she’d brought was one small suitcase and a backpack, both meant as carry-ons. She had money in her pocket and more in her bank account. She had a ticket to Barcelona, and from there she intended to spend the next four weeks traveling to wherever the desire took her. Places she’d read about or seen in movies but had never imagined she would actually visit. She would take planes and trains and buses and walk along cobblestoned streets and try adventurous foods from street vendors.

She didn’t want to go.

She was afraid to go; that was the embarrassing truth.

She tipped the driver and got out of the car. All Alicia could think of was that long-ago night, staring up at the night sky and watching those planets align. She’d never imagined back then that she wouldn’t get out of this town, that she wouldn’t live the life she’d dreamed of, so why now that she had the opportunity was she so terrified to actually try?

She hefted her pack on her shoulder and turned back, ready to hail the driver, but he probably wanted to get back home and into bed before the sun rose. He’d already pulled away from the curb, his brake lights barely blinking. Her fingers tightened on the handle of her suitcase.

And there, across the drop-off lane, standing with his hands shoved in his pockets, was Nikolai.

She didn’t believe it, not at first. She had to be conjuring him out of wishful thinking . . . but no, there he was, crossing the street, looking both ways so he wouldn’t get struck by a car. He was in front of her before she knew it.

“I couldn’t let you go without saying good-bye,” he said. “Not ever again.”

Alicia put down her bag, then the backpack. “What . . . ?”

He kissed her. Or she kissed him—she couldn’t be sure who moved first. Maybe they moved at the same time, urged by mutual desire and the urge to be in each other’s arms. All she knew was that the taste of him flooded her. His arms around her warded off the early-morning chill.

“I love you,” Nikolai said. “I should’ve told you before. I should’ve said it every time you asked me and every time you didn’t.”

Stunned, blinking away tears, Alicia swallowed the ache in her throat. “I love you, too. Are you asking me to stay?”

Nikolai shook his head, looking surprised. “Huh? No. Of course not.”

“But . . .” Confused, she tried to step out of his embrace, but he held her still.

“You should go. You need to go,” he told her. “You deserve this, Alicia. Go out there. See the world. Just . . . if you decide you want to . . . come back to me.”

Come back to me.

It was better than if he’d asked her to stay. She smiled, sniffing back tears, and kissed him again. People passing stared. She didn’t care. Let them look. Let them see what it was like to be loved.

“I’m only going for four weeks,” she said. “Then I’ll be back.”

“You might decide you like traveling so much you’ll want to leave again,” Nikolai told her, his expression serious even though the corners of his mouth quirked the tiniest bit. “That’s how it works, sometimes.”