Chapter 23 - Lila #3
What he's missing is that some choices can't be explained through professional frameworks, only through the terrible mathematics of caring about someone who kills people.
But I can't tell him any of that without destroying both our lives.
"I want my attorney," I repeat, because it's the only protection I have left against questions I can't answer honestly.
Finch nods, disappointment clear in his expression. "We'll arrange that. But Dr. North? Whoever's doing this, whoever you're protecting—they're not worth throwing your life away. They're not worth Casey's death or the deaths that are going to follow if we don't stop them."
The words hit exactly where he intends them to, because he's not wrong about the consequences. Casey is dead because of the choices I made, and more people will die if this continues. My protection of Kent has created exactly the kind of situation I joined this field to prevent.
But he's wrong about one thing: Kent is worth it. Worth the risk, worth the consequences, worth whatever price I have to pay for choosing love over law. Some connections transcend rational calculation, some bonds survive even when they probably shouldn't.
Some people are worth burning the world down to protect.
As Finch leads me toward whatever legal process comes next, I catch sight of the morgue's parking lot through a high window. Kent's silhouette in my BMW, completely still, waiting with the kind of patient attention he once brought to stalking predators.
He'll be counting down the minutes now, calculating when my safety becomes more important than maintaining cover. When protecting me becomes worth exposing himself to law enforcement scrutiny.
Part of me hopes he'll wait, hopes he'll let the legal system run its course while I figure out how to explain nine years of poor choices. But another part of me—the part that's still Delilah Jenkins underneath all the professional armor—hopes he won't.
Hopes he'll remember that some people are worth saving, even when they don't deserve it.
***
The drive home passes in silence that feels like drowning.
Kent's questions hang in the air between us—what happened, what did they find, how bad is the situation—but I can't form words around the devastation in my chest. Every time I try to speak, I see Casey's face arranged with mathematical precision, hear my own voice contradicting itself through digital playback.
See the end of everything I've built over the past nine years.
"Talk to me," Kent says as we sit in my parking garage, his voice carrying the kind of careful concern reserved for people balanced on the edge of complete breakdown. "Whatever happened in there, we'll figure it out."
The gentle reasonableness in his tone snaps something fundamental inside me.
"Figure it out?" The words come out like broken glass, sharp enough to cut. "They have recordings, Kent. Recordings of me lying to Casey, recordings of me telling Shaw the truth about your methods. They know I've been obstructing justice."
He goes very still beside me, processing the implications with the same methodical precision he once brought to planning murders.
"How extensive are the recordings?"
"Extensive enough." I laugh, the sound harsh and bitter in the confined space. "Shaw's been surveilling me, probably for weeks. She knows everything—about my knowledge of your work, about my contradictory analysis, about the fact that I've been protecting you instead of helping catch you."
"Then we disappear," Kent says, like it's the simplest thing in the world. "Tonight. I have resources, contacts, ways to get us both new identities and clean papers. We can be gone before they issue warrants."
The offer hangs between us, loaded with possibilities that make my chest tight with something that might be hope or might be terror.
Because he's not just offering escape—he's offering partnership.
The kind of permanent alliance that would make us both fugitives, both dependent on each other for survival.
The kind of connection I've wanted since I was seventeen and thought understanding someone meant they'd never leave.
"I can't," I whisper, though part of me wants to say yes.
"Why not?"
The question is simple, logical. It should have a simple answer. Instead, it opens something raw and infected inside me.
"Because I built this!" The words tear out of my throat like shrapnel. "I spent nine years becoming someone who mattered, someone who had power and authority and respect. Dr. Lila North isn't just a name—she's everything I am."
I'm out of the car before he can respond, my professional heels clicking against concrete as I pace in tight circles. "You think I can just walk away from that? Just throw away a decade of work because some psychopath wants to play games with our past?"
Kent gets out of the car too, moving with careful precision. "Lila—"
"No, you don't understand." I spin to face him, letting him see the fury that's been building beneath the professional mask. "You got to disappear once already. You got to choose anonymity over complications, got to walk away when things got messy. But I stayed. I rebuilt. I became something."
The accusation hits him like a physical blow, but I'm not done. Nine years of resentment is pouring out, all the careful control finally cracking under pressure.
"You don't get to show up now and ask me to throw it all away. You don't get to offer me escape when you already proved you'll abandon me the moment staying gets difficult."
"That's not—"
"Isn't it?" I move closer, letting him see the rage in my eyes.
"You walked away because you thought I deserved better than your darkness.
But I didn't want better, Kent. I wanted you.
And when you left, I had to become someone who didn't need anyone, someone who couldn't be abandoned because she never let anyone close enough to matter. "
My voice is rising, echoing off the parking garage walls.
"Dr. Lila North is my armor. She's my weapon.
She's proof that I survived what you did to me and became something stronger.
You want me to just…discard that? Become a fugitive running from fake crimes while the real killer gets away with murdering my friend? "
"Lila—"
"No." The sound of my heels seems grating against concrete as I pace in tight circles. "You don't get to minimize this. You don't get to tell me it's not my fault when Casey's body is arranged on a morgue table because I chose to protect a killer over innocent lives."
Kent still moves closer, albeit with the careful precision of someone approaching a wounded animal. "You're right," he says quietly. "This is partially my fault. My work created the template someone's using to terrorize you. My presence in your life made you a target."
The acknowledgment should provide some satisfaction, some vindication for the guilt that's eating away at my chest. Instead, it just makes everything worse. Because now we're both carrying responsibility for Casey's death, both trapped by choices that seemed justified at the time.
"It doesn't matter whose fault it is," I say, my voice cracking with exhaustion. "She's still dead. And tomorrow they'll arrest me for obstruction of justice, and you'll disappear back into whatever anonymous life you built, and none of this will have meant anything."
"I'm not disappearing."
The words stop my pacing, force me to look at him directly. Kent's standing perfectly still, hands at his sides, dark eyes locked on mine with the kind of unwavering focus that used to make predators confess their sins.
"What?"
"I said I'm not disappearing. Not walking away, not abandoning you to clean up this mess alone." He takes a step closer, close enough that I can see the determination in his expression. "Whatever happens next, we face it together."
The promise hits deeper than comfort or reassurance, because it's exactly what I needed to hear nine years ago. That he would choose me over safety, choose us over the careful distance that kept him functional.
That he would stay, regardless of the consequences.
"You'll go to prison," I whisper. "If they connect Kent Shepherd to the Carver, if they discover you're still alive, you'll spend the rest of your life in a cell."
"Maybe. Or maybe we're smart enough to stay ahead of them, experienced enough to disappear when necessary." His hand finds my face, thumb brushing away tears I didn't realize I was shedding. "Either way, I'm not leaving you again."
The words break something fundamental in my resistance. All the professional armor, all the careful distance, all the walls I've built to protect myself from exactly this kind of vulnerability—none of it matters when faced with the simple reality that he's choosing to stay.
That he's finally choosing me.