“Bye, Nathan.”
“Smash it,” he says urgently. “Make sure—”
I hang up before I have to listen to him say another word. He’s not part of this. Not in the way my aunt and uncle are. But somehow I feel like he’s complicit. He could have warned me before this, at the very least. A hot flush burns across my cheeks. Every last one of them is a rat. There’s nobody left to trust.
Except Rome.
First things first—get rid of this fucking phone. Kill the GPS signal screaming out my location. Then find Rome, and...I don’t know. Make him wrap me up tight, hide me somewhere until my heart settles down and my vision clears.
I drop the phone to the floor of the house and go to look for something to smash it with. In a closet off the kitchen, I find a toolbox. A hammer. I’m poised to crush it when another notification pops up.
Jennifer.
They know where you are. They’re coming to get you. Taking the jet. Waiting for the weather to swing around before they take off. You have a few hours at most. You need to run.
I reach down, shaking, and type two letters in: ty
I press send.
And then I bring the hammer down, again and again and again, until there’s nothing left but a little pile of crushed metal and shattered glass.
* * *
“Avery.” The door to the cabin bangs open and Rome rushes in. “I think we should—” I watch him take in the scene. Me, sweating by one of the big glass windows, hammer cocked like the phone is a spider and I’m waiting for it to run before I take it out for good. “What happened?”
I drop the hammer into the destroyed remnants of the phone and swipe a hand across my forehead. I’m numb, except for the insistent throb of anxiety around my heart. The anxiety flashes outward and threatens to consume me, but the numbness fights it back.
“My uncle was tracking my phone. My burner phone that I bought specifically so I couldn’t be tracked. He’s coming out here to get me.”
Rome crosses the cabin in a few big strides and takes my hands in his. I have a sickening sense of deja vu. This is like when we were in the basement. I can feel the mattress underneath my body and the pain from my IUD, from the collar, from the knife wounds up and down my arms. I can feel the nausea of being so dehydrated that I knew, I knew, that there was nothing to throw up but bile. The air between us shimmers. I can’t remember whose idea it was to die together, but this feels like the moment we decided on it. If he suggests it again—
“Were you serious about the wedding stuff? Because I am.” It shines in his eyes, how very serious he is. How much he means this. “And if you are, I want to marry you. Today. Now.”
I shake my head to clear my thoughts, a clarity bursting through the cloudy fear like sun through a rain cloud. Getting married isn’t a death sentence. If we have a death sentence, it’s there whether we get married or not. A bolt of pure, unadulterated joy spears the center of me. Marry Rome now. Now. He can be my husband before the sun sets again tonight.
“Who’s going to do it? Is there—is there actually a way?” An hour’s not long enough for us to drive anywhere. It’s not long enough to go to some city, convince a clerk at an office to get us a marriage license, and have it done. The little time we have feels like it’s sliding through my fingers, like sand from an hourglass that I can’t keep hold of.
“My dad’s an ordained minister. He already offered.” Rome smiles a tentative smile. It’s the most beautiful, heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen. “We can do it now, Aves. Right now. Here.”
I can feel every second as it ticks by as if there was a clock louder than every other sound in the world. I can feel the time running out. It drains from me like blood.
“It better be right now, then. Because my uncle didn’t just track my phone. He’s coming to get me on a fucking plane, and we only have a couple hours at most before he gets here.”
“Yes.” Rome takes my face in his hands. “Yes. That’s great. It fucking sucks that they’re coming for you, but I—I’m so excited.” He kisses me. Hard. Deep. Hot. His hand goes around the back of my head and pulls me in close, and for a few heartbeats, that’s all there is. Rome’s body against mine. His mouth, tasting me so deeply I could lose myself in it. The light from the sun. It’s everywhere, all around us.
“Let’s go,” I whisper against his mouth, the agony of time eating at me like an invisible poison. “Let’s go. Please, let’s go.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
ROME
I marry Avery Capulet twenty minutes later in the tiny church structure erected on the far edge of the commune, with the walls letting in a whispering morning breeze and the roofless chapel open to the cloudless desert sky.
It starts with a dead sprint across to the trailer, where my dad’s wife, balancing a sleeping newborn in one arm, whisks Avery away and my dad digs in an old jewelry box with shaking hands. After a minute he surfaces with a plain white-gold wedding band. A tiny one with several tiny diamonds embedded around it.
“Here.” He tips it into my hand with both of his, like he’s been cradling diamonds. For all I know, this could be sterling silver. But what matters is that it belonged to my mother. I take it and hold it up to the light. My mother’s wedding ring. Not the enormous solitaire diamond ring my father bought her later—her actual wedding band, which my dad slipped onto her finger back when they themselves eloped and got married. He looks down at the ring in my palm and reaches down to touch it tenderly. “She would want you to have this.”
I’m not a crier, but I’ve got a painful lump in my throat. It’s hard to say what my mother would have wanted, and I can’t really ask her and expect some logical answer. She’s too far away now, too locked into whatever parallel universe her mind exists in. She’ll never see this. It’s a nice thing to believe, though. I close my fist around the ring. In a traditional wedding, the ring would be carried to the front of the church by a member of the wedding party. I’m not letting it out of my sight until Avery and I exchange vows and I slide this onto her finger.
My father goes outside to ring a bell out front of the row of trailers. The sound echoes out over the commune and people perk up, lifting their heads from what they’re doing. Chores and conversations are interrupted. One couple comes out of their tent half-naked. My half-siblings sprint around the bell post shrieking at the top of their lungs.
“There,” Indigo says, as she steps out onto the trailer porch with Avery. My dad’s wife is all color and flowing fabrics, and Avery?
Avery’s the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen.
My stepmother has somehow rustled up a gauzy, sleeveless white dress and a flower crown. She’s swiped a shimmery pink blush over Avery’s cheeks, a clear gloss on her rosebud-shaped lips. My heart stops. If those fucking Capulets show up now, I’ll die with this sight before my eyes. That wouldn’t be the worst way to go.
But I’d rather make her my wife before that happens.
“Isn’t this bad luck?” Avery’s shy smile restarts my heart again. “You’re not supposed to see me on our wedding day.”
I try for a snarky joke. But words fail me. I take her hand instead. “I think the circumstances make it okay,” I tell her. And from the look in her eyes she knows what I mean.
Someone puts a bouquet of bright wildflowers in Avery’s hand, Indigo comes back out of her trailer with the baby in one arm, and my father leads the procession to the chapel like a medieval town crier. It isn’t far–a five minute walk and we’re standing before a glorious little wooden building with no roof and stained-glass windows that cast brilliant rainbows onto the bare earth floor within. The pews are made of felled logs, the aisle the same dirt we stand upon at the precipice. Before we go in the door a woman sprints up to meet my dad, putting a piece of paper in his hand.
“Perfect,” I hear him say. “Perfect. Thank you.”
“What is that?” Avery says. Her hand is locked around my arm.
“A marriage certificat
e.” That’s the only thing it could be. My dad probably marries people on the commune all year long. This way, they don’t have to go to the courthouse. “Our marriage certificate.”
Her mouth curls up into a contented smile.
We walk down the aisle together, led by my father. People from the commune fill the pews behind us, but we could be all alone for all I care. I appreciate the multiple witnesses, for sure. But in this moment, all I have eyes for is the woman I love.
I’m not letting go of Avery for one second. Not even long enough for a volunteer from the commune to give her away. She doesn’t need to be given away. She belongs to herself, and at the same time she’s already mine, in a deeper way than a wedding ceremony could ever suggest. And I’m not letting go of her for the rest of our lives.
We’re in a hell of a rush, the minutes ticking down, but time seems to soften in the chapel. A small mercy as our combined panic seems to slow and fade. My dad bows his head over a ratty Bible stuffed with notes. A sunbeam comes down to crown him, Avery and I reach for each other's hands, and all I can feel is her fingers resting on my palms and the breathing of the people around us. We’re all here, alive, right now.
We made it. We survived. And now, we’ll be married.
My stepmother comes to take Avery’s bouquet.
The last moments in that dungeon flash before my eyes. Tell me you love me. You don’t have to mean it.
I thought I’d die with her back in that basement. Chose to die with her. That was our plan. And here, in the holy silence of this moment, I’m stupidly, shamefully glad for every breath I’ve taken since then. I get to have this. I get to have her. And maybe it’s not for long, but fuck it. I’ll take every single, blessed second I can get. I’ll take looking into her eyes while she’s dressed in white. I’ll take the little quiver of her chin while my dad starts saying the wedding vows. I’ll take her saying I do.
It’s the quickest ceremony in the world, but it feels timeless. We’re in a slow, languid, light-filled moment, hearts beating hard, while I put my mother’s ring on Avery’s finger. It fits. It fucking fits. And Avery, with a sly grin, produces a men’s ring from inside her bra.
“Where—” I dissolve into laughter, the kind that makes everybody else join in, too. I haven’t laughed like this in years. It might as well be during this bizarre commune wedding ceremony, surrounded by my dad’s closest friends. My young half-brothers, half-naked at the front of the crowd, lose their shit.
“Shh,” Avery says, and she puts my ring on, too. The weight of it is familiar, like I’ve had it all my life. Maybe I have. I recognize it. It’s the matching ring to the one I just gave Avery. His and hers. Til death do us part.
Then my dad says You may kiss your bride.
It’s my first taste of Avery as a Montague, and it’s better than food after being starved. It’s better than water after being parched. All those old wounds heal themselves. I don’t care if it sounds like bullshit—it’s true, love conquers all. She puts her arms around my neck and sighs into my mouth and everything falls away except the sweetness of her.
It’s over, I think wildly. There’s no more war between us. There’s no more fucking feud between Capulets and Montagues. It’s done. It’s all fucking done. We are one.
It’s not over. I know that, on an intellectual level. But as the commune—our wedding party—breaks into applause and cheers, it’s easy to believe it, even if for only a moment in time.
The moment is so short, so fleeting. It’s the happiest I’ve ever been.
And then, in an instant, everything shatters.
It’s a tiny dot in the sky, at first. It could be an eagle, or an errant balloon that’s slipped loose from a child’s grip.
But it’s neither of those things.
It’s a helicopter.
A helicopter carrying the people who want to shatter our union. The enemy.
Avery’s family.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
AVERY
Rome takes my hand, and we run.
Time presses down on us, squeezing the air from my lungs at the same time our freshly-inked marriage tries to flood me with joy. I want to breathe in the hot desert morning, I want to bask in the sun from the clear sky overhead, I want to love this moment. Savor it. Rome promised me he’d take me to heaven if we survived, and he kept his word. This is everything and more. My lungs tighten with anxiety but my body buzzes from the closeness of him. My new husband.
Avery Capulet is dead. Long live Avery Montague.
We run for the cabin at a dead sprint. My wedding band feels strange on my finger for how light it is, but I want it to feel heavier. I never want to forget. Never, ever.
I belong to him now.
He belongs to me.
Nobody can deny it.
I force myself firmly back into the moment. These last, precious moments. I’ve been here before, with Rome in the basement, knowing that I was looking at him for the last time. Touching him for the last time. This is different, but it feels the same—and then that feeling tumbles out of me and I leave it behind in the dirt.
Rome yanks me into the cabin with all his strength and kicks the door closed behind us. No time, no time. He backs me up against the door and shoves my dress up to my waist. My wedding dress. He whips his shirt over his head. I chose my nicest panties today, and Rome rips them right off my body. He has a savage, animalistic look in his eyes. A focus I’ve never seen. He feels it too. He feels the helicopter getting closer. He feels this all coming to an end. No—not an end. A new beginning.
He falls to his knees and pushes my legs apart while I hold my bunched dress in shaking fists. Rome’s tongue is rough on the most private part of me, the burning hot bundle of nerves between my legs, and he lets out a low moan that vibrates through all of me. I wish he’d stay there. But I want him to do other things more. I want him to make this final. I want him to consummate this marriage with me as the clock ticks down dangerously fast.
As if he can read my mind, he stands up, hauls me against him, and lifts me into his hands.
The door is his only boundary and he goes for it at full speed, knocking my back against it with a booming thud. He shoves his cock into me in one hard stroke. I sink down on it. My dress falls around us, the only flimsy shield that stops the outside world from seeing us–we are in a house made of glass, after all. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem as if anyone has followed us here, with the rest of the commune having headed for the other side of the property as soon as it became apparent the chopper was trying to land here. I can’t hold onto Rome and the dress at the same time and oh, fuck, that’s good. It’s so good. We’re a perfect fit, in that he’s big enough to stretch me without real pain and strong enough to hold me up while I buck and roll my hips.
There’s nothing but sunlight. There’s nothing but desert and trees and Rome, fucking me. The cool press of the door against my back. The flower crown on my head. His thick cock, taking me. Again, again, again. The blunt tip of it hits my g-spot and all of me clenches around him. He bends his head forward and presses his lips to my neck. A kiss, hard and hot. Another one. I come around him, biting down on his shoulder as I moan loudly.
“Fuck, Avery, fuck, fuck—” He pumps into me like there’s no tomorrow. For me, there is no tomorrow. There’s only the next breath. Only the next second. Think beyond that and I’ll lose it. I’ll just lose it. Because another orgasm gears up, pleasure building down low, and I hit my head on the door from throwing it back.
“Don’t come,” I chant into his ear. “Let me, let me, let me—”
And I do.
I pin my legs around his waist and ride a wave so blinding I think the sun has come down into our little cottage.
“I’m coming,” Rome says, and he starts to draw away from me.
“No,” I moan, locking my legs around him. “Inside me. You’re my husband.”
With a roar Rome pins me against the door and goes in hard. I feel the catch and release of
his muscles as he comes. I feel the hot spurts of him, emptying inside of me.
Can’t take this back. Can’t unconsummate our marriage. It’s real now, it’s done. I feel it, I feel it—
I hear them.
The sirens.
It’s not me who’s screaming—it’s police cars. They must have landed nearby to come after me. I was waiting for the beat of the helicopter, but I was wrong.
I cling to Rome for a few more precious seconds and then he pulls out, setting me back on my feet. His cum drips down the inside of my thigh, still warm and thrilling. Leave it. Let them all see it. I don’t care. I belong to him.
“Here.” He tosses me a fresh pair of panties and I struggle against the buzz to pull them on. Rome tugs his shirt over his head. My skirt is caught in the waistband of the panties when the police cars arrive. I free it, smoothing the skirt down, reveling in the burn of what we just did, in the wet heat of carrying Rome’s cum inside me, held snug inside my body by a pair of rapidly soaking panties.
Six police cars—six too many—speed onto the commune property. People scatter outside. Rome’s stepmother tears after her two boys.
“This is federal land,” Rome says, shaking his head. “They shouldn’t even be here. They have no jurisdiction. It’s illegal.”
I swallow past the sharp rock lodged in my throat, not sure whether I should cry or scream.
“My family hardly cares about legalities,” I say sadly.
I grab Rome’s hand. “Do we run?”
He grits his teeth. A reluctant, “no,” growls in his throat.
Police SUVs, sirens going, kick up the dust by our cottage. One by one, doors open and slam. I can’t stop trembling until Rome squeezes my hand.
The door’s not locked, so when they try it, it flies open with a surprising amount of speed. “Hands up!” the first guy shouts. “In the air, now!”
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