Constant (The Confidence Game Book 1)

by Rachel Higginson

  Forcing my gaze from his, I absorbed the extravagant room that was ours for the night. The muted fabrics were highlighted with golden accents so that they matched the cream and gold furniture, and there were windows on every side. Wide, tall, stretching windows revealed the city at night and all the glittering light dancing from historic building to shimmery water to stoic monument.

  He’d picked the most beautiful room for us. And after imagining the evening he had planned, I knew I truly would have been swept off my feet. I was halfway there now and we’d just outrun the feds.

  Pressing my hands to my stomach, I tried not to think about why Sayer would go to all these great lengths. I was nervous now for an entirely different reason. Anticipation buzzed inside of me, a swarm of bees without a place to land. My fingers started trembling, so I hid them behind my back, unwilling to share my weakness. I was supposed to be resilient, unflappable, completely cool under pressure. And yet with just the opening of a door, Sayer had managed to completely turn me inside out.

  “What was that down there?” I asked because it was easier to change the direction of my thoughts than come to terms with what this room could mean.

  Sayer frowned. “I don’t know.”

  “They knew my real name,” I said unnecessarily. “They recognized me.” I held his gaze, opening mine up so he could see all my truth, all the things I wouldn’t hide from him. “How, Sayer? Why me?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ll make a call. See what I can find out.”

  Before he could do that though, I started shaking. And it wasn’t the quivering of a nervous virgin on the potential night of her deflowering. No, this was full body quaking from nearly getting caught by federal agents.

  It was the first time I had ever been made. It was the first time an FBI agent knew me by name. It was the first time I had ever had to face the consequences of my lifestyle.

  “Hey,” Sayer murmured gently. He rushed to me, pulling me into a tight hug against his body. I wrapped my arms around him, absorbing his strength and steady nerves. “Hey, Caroline, it’s going to be fine.”

  I hugged him harder, crushing my body as close to his as was humanly possible. “I’ve never talked to them before, Sayer. Other than the recon we did before tonight, I have never even seen them. How did they know me?”

  One of his long fingers nudged my chin, lifting my face to look at his. “I believe you. Okay? You’re safe. You’re not in trouble.”

  His soothing words did nothing to calm my racing nerves. “What if they arrest me? What if they have something on me?”

  His blue eyes blazed with conviction. “They won’t.” His frown returned. “They don’t. I’ll figure it out,” he promised. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. And if by some miracle they have a tiny piece of evidence against you, we’ll make it go away. It won’t be hard. You’re going to be fine.”

  I felt sick. All I could think about was Brick and Vinnie’s warnings. “How do you know?”

  “Because I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I promise you that, Six. As long as I’m able, I will protect you from every bad thing. You don’t have to worry about anything. Ever. I will do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”

  His words wrapped around my heart, cradling it back to reality. His promises seemed impossible. Except I believed him. There was conviction in his tone, raw truth in his eyes. Sayer meant what he said. Every single word of it. “How can you say that? We’ve only been going out for—”

  “You think my feelings started when we kissed?” His eyebrows drew down over his eyes. “You think my feelings started a couple months ago? Come on, Six, I’ve been after you since the first day I met you. Since you saved my life and gave me something to live for.”

  “Sayer, I didn’t—”

  His fingers pressed against my lips. “Caroline, before that day I was lost. I was living on the streets, afraid of dying every single day. Afraid of dying that day when your dad and his friends were done with me. And then there you were, so fucking pretty my chest hurt just looking at you. And you didn’t just give me the courage to get through the day, you gave me the tools I needed to get off the streets. To stay off the streets. To keep living. To live for something. You saved my life that day, but you also saved my soul. You gave me the brotherhood, yeah. But before that? You gave me you. And since that day you’ve been it for me. My world. The one thing I’m living for above everything else.”

  I couldn’t speak. I didn’t want to speak. I just wanted to spend the rest of the night absorbing those words, playing them over and over and over in my head until I finally convinced my heart to believe them. How… how did he expect me to recover from that?

  “I love you, Six. I think I’ve loved you since that alley. I think I’ll always love you.” I bit my bottom lip and tried to steady my breathing. I was desperate to hold myself together, to keep from crumbling in a heap of awe and emotion and hope. How did I get to have this man’s love? How did I get to love him back? How was this my real life? There had never been a job that compared to this moment. No surge of adrenaline or priceless trophy or singular moment in all of history that was as special as this one. He mistook my silence for rejection. Glancing down at the carpet, he asked, “Is it too soon to say all that? I meant to wait…”

  “It’s not too soon,” I whispered, barely finding my voice. My frozen fingers cradled his face, coaxing him to look at me again. “It’s not.” I had to swallow a deep breath and dig for courage, but finally I was able to confess my truth. “I think I’ve loved you from that same day. I think I’ve always loved you. I can’t remember a day when I didn’t. Before you I was miserable and angry. And then there you were and it was like I had finally found…”

  “Something to live for,” he filled in, his words making permanent homes in my heart, filling my soul with a satisfaction I had not known existed.

  I knew he’d just confessed he loved me, but the insecure girl in me had been expecting rejection anyway. Instead, I got the most beautiful boy smiling the most beautiful smile. All of Sayer relaxed in a way I had never seen from him before. He was warm and bright and radiating peace all at once. It was like my confirmation of love had given him access to a whole new part of him, a piece he hadn’t even realized he’d been missing.

  His head dipped to meet my lips already on their way to his. His kiss was tender, slow, achingly reverent. His hands landed on my shoulders and slid down my arms, carefully caressing my body as he went.

  There was so much sweet worship in this kiss that I didn’t know if I’d be able to survive it. I had never been touched like this before. Never been kissed like this.

  His mouth was all warm seduction as he moved over mine. I was a fluttering heartbeat of consent as he moved us to the bedroom, stripping pieces of our clothing as we went. Our shoes were left in the entryway. His jacket over the back of the couch. His belt on the floor by the bathroom. His shirt and my dress at the foot of the bed.

  He laid me back on the puffy comforter and slowly stripped my stockings off me. I lay there in my strapless bra and miniscule panties and waited breathlessly for him to cover me with the warmth of his body.

  He came down on top of me like a boy that had been given the best gift of his life. His eyes alight with true love, his hands trembling with the sacredness of the moment. His mouth moved over my body, tasting every inch of me, kissing and licking and adoring me as though he’d never had something so wonderful before.

  The rest of our clothes quickly disappeared and we were left naked and desperate for each other. I still trembled. I couldn’t stop myself.

  I had never been this far with a boy before. I had never been this intimate or exposed. And yet, he took care of me as we explored uncharted territories carefully.

  His fingers dipped inside me first, taking me to a precipice I didn’t know existed. And just when I thought I couldn’t hang on for a second longer, he changed tactics. I watched him put a condom on without taking a breath
.

  “Have you done this before?” he asked, his gaze holding mine captive.

  I shook my head. “No.”

  His expression softened, deepened, his entire body going taut with anticipation. Then he was hovering over me, whispering promises and I love yous and pushing inside me slowly. There was the break, the release of the barrier and a wince from me while he kissed my breasts and my collarbone and all the places he could reach, soothing the ache and creating a new one all at once.

  “Sayer,” I whispered, needing him to move, to do something other than drive me to the edge of insanity. “Love me,” I begged shamelessly.

  His head lifted and our gazes collided, finding each other in the darkened room, refusing to let go.

  “Always,” he swore. But he didn’t move right away. Instead, his mouth pressed against mine, searing that promise to my lips, making it permanent.

  When at last he lifted his hips, only to drive them deeper inside me, I gasped at the sensation. I didn’t know something like this existed… I didn’t know it was this good.

  We were a tangle of lust and something deeper, something eternal. My breath hitched and continued to hitch until I finally tumbled over the edge of blinding light. My legs were wrapped impossibly tight around his waist and my fingernails dug into his back without realizing it. He chased after me, moving fast, hard, deep.

  “Oh, God,” I gasped. And that same beautiful symphony of light and sensation and the tightening of every last muscle happened a second time.

  When I came back to earth, he was still over me, and in me, watching me with unfiltered awe all over his face. My laugh was shaky, self-conscious, nervous… “Wow,” I whispered.

  I was all rubbery limbs and warm muscles, but he was as serious as always, observing me with that same sharp instinct. “I will never be the same,” he said, his voice roughened gravel. “You’ve done something to me that can never be undone.”

  I didn’t have the strength to be as serious as him. Instead, I lifted up on my elbows and kissed the corner of his mouth. “I’ll be gentle.”

  He finally rolled over, pulling me into the crook of his body. I laid there listening to the heavy beat of his heart and smiled at a victory I had never known I wanted. “I don’t need you to be gentle. I just need you to stay with me. Don’t leave me, Six. I won’t survive it.”

  I pressed my hand over his heart, loving the feel of him like this, so wide-open, so absolutely familiar. But I knew what he meant. I wouldn’t survive it either. Not after this.

  Not after that.

  After we’d cleaned up, we found each other in bed again. I curled into him, loving the feel of his naked body against mine—even when we weren’t doing anything but cuddling.

  “It feels safe here,” I whispered to him. The feds might be looking for me, but I was untouchable in this room. If they had an arrest warrant, I would face them in the morning. But here with Sayer I was safe. And it wasn’t just them that I wanted to hide from. It was all of it. The bratva, my dad, the job. I just wanted to stay here with Sayer forever. “I don’t want to leave.”

  His fingertips stroked my back, running up and down my spine, lulling me to sleep. “We will always have this, Six. We don’t need a room for this.”

  I closed my eyes and drifted to sleep knowing he was right. We were connected at the deepest level now. We’d been on this trajectory since the day we met. Tonight had been a fiery culmination of everything between us. Fireworks and explosions and the melding of two hearts that formerly belonged in two different bodies. Now I held his within me. And he owned every inch of mine.

  I knew we were young and it was impossible to tell what the future held for us. But I also knew my heart. It would never belong to someone else.

  I was Sayer’s. Forever.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Present Day

  I looked down at the text Frankie sent me, all my emotions bubbling over with righteous indignation. This was highway robbery.

  The dollar amount for three new identities stared at me, eyebrows lifted in mild disdain. It seemed to ask, “What?” in that teenager tone of some of our resort guests that drove me crazy.

  “You’re what,” I told the identities. “You’re too expensive.”

  The number didn’t change. Son of a bitch.

  It was almost the end of the day, but this couldn’t wait. I pulled my purse out of the filing cabinet and reached my hand into the hidden pocket, retrieving my emergency track phone. I didn’t trust cell phones or text messages or really any kind of smart technology.

  Like I said, paranoia was my best friend.

  I texted Frankie from my real cell asking if we could talk.

  Innocuous enough, right? But she would see the code. Five minutes later when she replied with a curt, Sure, I knew she had her own track phone and had settled in a secured location.

  I slipped my normal cell into my purse, and slammed everything away in the metal cabinet taking the burner to the bathroom. I dialed her number from memory and counted the rings until she answered.

  “Why is it so much?” I asked on a raised whisper.

  “Juliet,” she answered immediately. “You were right. You need a lot of paperwork for kids.”

  “We don’t have enough, Francesca. Not for that amount.”

  Something banged on the other end of the phone. She hit something. Or kicked it. “They’re coming for us, Caroline. We have to do something.”

  Cash.

  This was a cash flow problem. We had money. We had assets. But we didn’t want to trip any wires or alert any unnecessary authorities. We had to leave Frisco discreetly or people would start looking for us. Maybe not many, but enough to start a snowball effect that could land us in serious trouble.

  Maggie, for instance. Jesse. Juliet’s preschool and daycare teachers. Our landlord—especially when we left a whole bunch of shit behind.

  If we had rock solid identities, none of it would be a problem. We’d lay low for a while and reemerge in a brand-new town as brand new people.

  But we didn’t know these counterfeiters. We were putting blind trust in strangers, which sat wrong with me. I wasn’t going to chance everything else too.

  So what we needed was cash.

  Or something of value that we could turn into cash.

  “The office, Frankie. Sayer’s office. It’s flush.”

  “Caroline…”

  “Come on, it’s perfect. And it all belongs to me anyway. They stole it from me.” My tone hardened with conviction the more the plan developed in my head. “I’d just be reclaiming what’s rightfully mine.”

  “This sounds like a terrible idea,” she warned.

  “What other options do we have? Give me another solution and I’ll gladly take it.” Although that wasn’t entirely true. The more I thought about getting all of my things back, the more I liked the idea.

  It was mine anyway. Sayer had no claim to it. The fact he had it in the first place was a good reminder he had never trusted me like he claimed to. He had never believed my promises. He’d used me, manipulated me and then counted on my trust in him to pocket a hell of a lot of insurance.

  “We could do something here. In town. Something fast but low maintenance. Like a laundromat or something.”

  “You want to rob a laundromat?”

  “Or the till here. I could just walk out with it today after I get off. They’re insured. The Lodge would be fine.”

  “No way. You’re crazy. Come on, Frankie, think this all the way through. They would catch you on camera. And as soon as word hit DC, whatever’s left of the syndicate would come for us. We have to be smarter than that. We can’t make mistakes.”

  “Sayer will know that it’s you,” she argued.

  “But he won’t send an army after us. If anything, he’ll come after me himself. Just him. Just me.”

  “And Juliet?”

  That made me pause. What would Sayer do if he found my daughter… our daughter? “Give me some
thing else then. Anything else. I’ll take it. I’ll do it. Whatever it is. Just tell me what to do, Frankie. I’m out of options.” My voice was a ragged whisper. I could feel the exhaustion all the way to my bones. It was a painful, intolerable thing, like a clenched fist on the jugular of my soul. I wanted to escape just so I could find somewhere new and take a nap.

  I just needed to catch my breath.

  When Frankie spoke again, she was resigned. We both knew the answer. It was dangerous, but it was possible. And nobody in Frisco got hurt.

  “What do you need me to do?” she asked.

  “Where is the guy? Where can we get the papers?”

  “Denver,” she whispered. “He said a week.”

  “Set it up then. We’ll leave tonight and lie low until the papers are ready. As long as they’re in process we can live off cash for a week. That will give us time to fence the goods and come up with enough to pay him.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Can you pick up Jules? I’ll meet you at home. Have everything packed up and ready.”

  I guess all of my leave in good standing, don’t raise questions philosophy was thrown out the window. But with Sayer’s basement office calling my name, it finally felt like we had a solution.

  “Sayer will never forgive you for leaving him twice, Caro. Are you sure you’re up for this?”

  She was right. Sayer would never forgive me. And if I ran off with all his cash, he might never give up looking for me either.

  But that was a risk I was willing to take.

  I would be smarter next time. I would never let my guard down. I would never get comfortable.

  “Frankie, can you pick Juliet up tonight or not?”

  “I can get her,” she agreed. I could feel that she wanted so say something more. Whatever it was swirled in the air between us, clogging up the line, stifling all the breathable air.

  “Be ready to go,” I ordered, cutting her off before she made me question myself.

  I hung up our call and slipped it into my pocket. It was so much smaller than my other phone, I barely noticed it.