Chapter 19 - Lila #3
"Neither are you." I move to the kitchen island, putting space between us while maintaining visual control of the room. "The question is whether the people we've become can work together to figure out who's trying to destroy us both."
"You said someone knows about us," Kent says, moving to the windows and noting the sightlines, the potential security vulnerabilities. Still thinking like a predator, even in my carefully constructed sanctuary. "What makes you think this is personal?"
"Whoever it was left a note with Chen’s body I confiscated: my initials.
D.J." The admission sits heavy in the air between us, carrying implications I'm not sure either of us is ready to face.
"The first murder happened right when I was brought in as a consultant.
The second one escalated the pattern just enough to ensure I couldn't dismiss it as coincidence.
Someone wanted me to recognize your work. "
"And then?"
"And then I'd have to decide what to do about it. Whether to reveal what I know to help catch you or protect you by misdirecting the investigation." I meet his eyes directly, letting him see the choice I made. "They were counting on me choosing you over my professional obligations."
Kent processes this with the same methodical precision I remember, working through implications and possibilities with the patience of someone who's learned that rushing leads to mistakes.
"Someone who knows our history," he says finally. "Someone who understands that you'd recognize my signature and predict your response to seeing it."
"Which means someone who likely knows about the fact that Delilah Jenkins helped you kill her father.
" The words taste dangerous on my tongue, carrying secrets I've never spoken aloud to anyone.
"Someone who's been studying us both for long enough to understand how we'd react to each other being threatened. "
The realization settles between us like a physical weight.
Because if someone knows that much about our shared history, they know enough to destroy both our carefully constructed lives with a few well-placed revelations.
They know I obstructed justice to protect a killer.
They know he's been living under an assumed identity, while law enforcement believes the Carver is still at large.
They hold our entire futures in their hands, and they're using that leverage to manipulate us into…what? Reunion? Mutual destruction? Some kind of psychological experiment that requires both subjects to be present?
"We need to figure out who's doing this," I say, though part of me already knows this conversation was inevitable. "Before they kill anyone else. Before they decide to reveal what they know."
“Are you afraid?” he asks.
I can’t help but bark a laugh at that. “I’m insulted,” I mock, “you feel the need to ask that.”
His lips pursed into a tight line, Kent nods.
"You really have become dangerous," he observes, and there's something in his voice that sends heat racing through my chest. "The girl I knew was remarkable, but this…you're formidable now."
The compliment hits deeper than it should, because it comes from someone who understands exactly what formidable means. Not just intelligent or successful, but genuinely capable of violence when circumstances require it. Someone who could be trusted as a partner rather than protected as a victim.
Someone worth staying for, instead of walking away from.
The thought materializes before I can stop it, carrying years of buried resentment and carefully controlled longing. Because that's what this is really about, isn't it? Not just figuring out who's using his signature, but confronting what might have been if he'd trusted me enough to stay.
If he'd seen me as an equal instead of a child who needed saving from her own choices.
"I'm exactly what you could have had," I say, the words acidic, "if you'd been brave enough to find out what I could become."
The accusation hangs in the air between us, loaded with nine years of what-ifs and might-have-beens. Kent's expression goes very still, and I can see him processing the implications of what I've just said.
That I became dangerous not despite his abandonment, but because of it.
That the woman standing in this expensive apartment, holding professional authority and the power to destroy him with a single phone call, exists because he walked away from the girl who might have become something else entirely.
That his attempt to protect me from darkness only taught me to navigate it alone.
"Delilah," he starts, but I shake my head, cutting off whatever explanation or apology he thinks will fix what he did to me.
"Don't," I say, moving around the kitchen island to close the distance between us. "It’s Lila now. And I have no interest in your trying to explain why you had to save me from myself. I don’t need to hear it again.
So don't tell me it was for my own good, or that you were protecting my future, or any of the other bullshit you've probably been telling yourself to sleep at night. You’re a fucking coward, and we both know it. One I haven’t pined for, by the way. "
Kent doesn't back away as I approach, though something in his expression suggests he recognizes the danger in letting me get too close. The same analytical assessment he once brought to studying predators, except now he's the one being studied.
"I made the right choice," he says quietly, but there's uncertainty in his voice that wasn't there nine years ago.
"For who?" The question comes out like a challenge, because that's what it is.
"For me? I spent the last decade learning to be someone who didn't need anyone's protection.
For you? You spent the last nine years hiding in whatever carefully constructed anonymity kept you functional while I became this. "
I stop directly in front of him, close enough to see the way his pupils dilate slightly, the careful control of his breathing that suggests he's not as unaffected by my proximity as he wants to appear.
"I still became someone who could be your partner instead of your victim," I continue, letting him see exactly what his abandonment cost both of us. "Someone who could choose you with full knowledge of what that choice means. Someone dangerous enough to deserve you. And it’s you who doesn’t deserve me now. "
The words hang between us like a lit fuse, carrying implications that make the air feel thick and electric. Because that's what I'm really saying, isn't it? That I didn't just become successful or professional or formidable.
I became his equal. Someone who could look at necessary violence and see justice rather than horror. Someone who could participate in carefully applied brutality without losing herself in the process.
Someone who could love a killer and make him better rather than being destroyed by the association.
Kent's control finally cracks, just slightly, enough to let me see what my words have done to him. Recognition, hunger, something that might be regret for chances not taken and years wasted maintaining careful distance.
"You don't know what you're saying," he says, but his voice is rougher now, carrying undertones that make my pulse spike.
"I know exactly what I'm saying." I reach up and trace one finger along his jaw, noting the way he goes perfectly still under my touch.
"I'm saying you walked away from someone who could have been everything you never knew you wanted.
I'm saying you were wrong about what I deserved.
And I'm saying that whoever's using your signature to kill innocent people made a serious miscalculation. "
"What kind of miscalculation?"
My hand slides from his jaw to his chest, feeling the steady rhythm of his heart beneath my palm. "They thought bringing us back together would destroy us both. Instead, they've just given us exactly what we needed to become unstoppable."
Kent's eyes drop to my mouth, and I can see the exact moment when his careful control starts to fracture. Nine years of separation, nine years of wondering what might have been, nine years of carrying secrets that can only be shared with one other person in the world.
"Lila," he says, my name rough with something that sounds like warning and plea in equal measure.
But I'm done with warnings. Done with careful boundaries and professional distance and all the reasons why this is complicated or dangerous or wrong. Someone is using our shared history to manipulate us both, counting on our separation to keep us vulnerable.
Time to show them exactly how wrong they were about what we'd become apart—and what we might become together.
For a moment, we stand there in perfect tension.
Close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off his body, close enough to see the exact moment when his careful control begins to fracture.
His eyes drop to my mouth, and I can see nine years of suppressed longing warring with whatever principles are telling him this is still complicated, still dangerous.
"Fuck," he breathes, and then he's closing the distance between us, his mouth crashing against mine with so much suppressed longing concentrated into that single point of contact.
Not gentle or tentative, but claiming—a demand that tastes like recognition and hunger and careful distance finally collapsing under the weight of proximity.
His hands find my waist, pulling me closer, and for a heartbeat, I'm seventeen again, desperate and grateful that someone finally sees me clearly enough to want me despite the darkness we share.
Yet, too soon, reality crashes back. With it, all my vengeful fury.
Who the fuck does he think he is?
My hand cracks across his face with enough force to snap his head to the side, the sound echoing through my apartment like a gunshot. Kent staggers back a step, one hand rising to his reddening cheek, his eyes wide with shock.