Free Armageddon Rules by J. C. Nelson Page A

actually need to go to the bathroom, you want that one over there.” He pointed to a much smaller set of doors.
    Beth looked at him like now the third eye had attached to his head.
    “Beth, with a name like ‘The Mile High Club,’ didn’t it occur to you that there might be people having sex almost anyplace private?” I smiled as a look of shock spread over her face. “Small restrooms are for using the bathroom.”
    She shuffled off to the small bathrooms, eyeing everyone else at the tables she passed with suspicion.
    Liam caught my hand, and smiled at me. “Remember the scene in that one film where the lady in brown meets her cousin’s husband? What did she tell him? Il ya un gopher dans mon pantalon. It means ‘Things are going to be fine.’”
    Despite his claim of having a gopher in his pants, I almost believed him.

Eight

    FRIDAY CAME TOO soon. The truth was, if Friday had come next year, it would have come too soon. I’m not a controlling, possessive woman. Okay, I am possessive. I’m terribly jealous, and impossibly in love, but it wasn’t just that. I missed Liam already, and he wasn’t even gone.
    We drove to the airport, and Ari came along to give me company on the way back. I had hoped for trouble getting through security. Or a long baggage line, or a problem with Liam’s passport. Anything to give us more time. Airport security selected me for the random mammogram and anal probe and let Liam breeze through.
    We sat in the terminal, lines of passengers rushing past us and announcers blaring out warnings in every language on earth. I leaned up against him, and he put his arm around me.
    “It’s only two weeks, M. Then we’ll have enough Glitter to end this curse. Enough money to retire on, if you want. We can raise our kids and work when we want to, if we want to.” His chin prickled the top of my head as I looked up at him.
    “Kids?” We’d talked about one. I wanted a daughter of my own. Liam wanted a son. The thought of being responsible for another life scared me worse than a platoon of gremlins in an espresso bar, but it would give me the chance to love someone the way I wished I had been.
    Liam misread the look on my face. “We don’t have to have a whole litter.”
    “How ’bout one, to start? We can add on later.” I didn’t bother trying to hide the tears that came to my eyes.
    Liam wrapped me in his arms and held me. All my adult life I’d always been the strong woman. The one who could walk into a room full of goblins knowing I’d be shooting someone. The one who climbed a beanstalk in spite of my fear of heights and did a low oxygen jump to escape. With Liam, I didn’t have to be that person.
    “Don’t go,” I said, holding on to his shirt with both hands.
    He put his hands over mine, rough and warm, and smiled. “I’ll be back before you know it. Like that guy said in the third film, Si seulement il y avait un moyen de sauver les canards . It means ‘I couldn’t ever forget you.’”
    He’d actually lamented not being able to save the ducks, but I didn’t feel like pointing that out. Liam was leaving. No matter what I told him, no matter what I said, he was going to get on that plane and fly to Europe. I’d spend the rest of the month alone while he worked a job that only mattered to him because of our future.
    Then it was time for him to board. We kissed. I said I loved him more times than I could count, and he walked away to security. I stood, isolated in a throng of passing people, alone in a crowd.
    *   *   *
    ARI WAITED FOR me back at the car, lost in her own thoughts. As we drove back, I finally spoke. “How’d training go?” I hadn’t seen Ari the rest of Wednesday but heard she didn’t get back until well after three in the morning.
    Ari rubbed her fingers together, generating surges of lightning as she worried.
    “You failed the retake in civics?” I privately resolved to make it clear to Grimm that if he cut into her study time, he was