Chapter 10 #2
“You’re not out of chances.” I take a chance and brush her upper arm with my fingers.
She doesn’t jerk away or fall off the couch in her hurry to put distance between us.
She doesn’t move at all. “There isn’t a finite amount of resources that can help you.
There’s no dead end. There are only things that don’t work, things to be discovered, and things to be tried. ”
“This is your life.” Her eyes glitter brighter before she ducks her head and turns towards the window, where the blinds are drawn tightly over all three sections. “I can’t just intrude on it and in it forever.”
“This is also your life. I can’t intrude on it forever either.”
“You’re not,” she insists. “I’m the one here.”
“You could rent out the basement, or we could find you a house in Hart, if you like. The club owns a bunch of rentals, apparently. Scythe was telling me about them. Don’t ever think you’re out of options or that we don’t want you here.”
“Maverick…”
“I know. I know that things can’t be more than a friendship.
” She turns to me as soon as I say that word, and the pain on her face, even in the dark, is easy to read.
I don’t like it, but it’s not just that.
It’s underscored with something raw and utterly naked.
Longing? Or am I just seeing what I want to see?
“We’re not ready. Just please don’t shut even that much down. I’d miss you more than I could say.”
“I’d miss you too,” she whispers, without hesitation.
“I know that you haven’t given up. Just leave space for something more. That’s all I’m asking. Just the thought, even. Just one micron in a whole big ocean of possibility.”
I’m more afraid now than I ever have been in the past. I’m scared as hell that she’ll say no and shut down completely again. Her eyes scrape over my face, seeing so much, even in the darkness of Scythe’s living room.
“Okay.”
Her soft agreement gives me the courage to ask her the question that’s played over and over in my brain since that day at her apartment. “Do you feel like you can’t tell me what happened to you because I’ll go off seeking vigilante justice and end up in prison again?”
She startles so badly that she leaps off the couch.
I’ve crossed all the lines. Shit. This is it.
I’ve wrecked whatever sweetness, the rapport, the trust. I could have shot it all to hell with the kidnapping, but miraculously, she still came up here to seek comfort from me.
I shouldn’t have asked. She’s not ready to talk about this and it’s not for me to press into her wounds.
I expect that she’ll toss her hair over her shoulder as a way to flip me off, or that she’ll retreat back down to the basement, back to solitude. Her frown eases and her face softens.
“You have the sweetest moral compass of anyone I know. Prison didn’t erase that in you. It didn’t harden you the way it does others. You’re a different man now, but I do think that if I told you, you wouldn’t hesitate to try and give me justice.”
“This person is still out there. Still alive. Still free.”
“I know.”
She doesn’t sit back down. Doesn’t pace. She just stands there. She doesn’t tremble, but there’s something still so vulnerable about her that it takes everything I have to keep my ass sitting down on this couch.
“He stole a lot from me, but not my dignity. He was sicker than that. He got off on the thrill of hurting me and scaring me. This guy has no record. If he’s done things like this to others, they haven’t talked.”
“You didn’t press charges. That’s clear.”
“Only because for weeks, I couldn’t remember what really happened. The whole thing was scrambled. It was like my brain was trying to keep me from going back to that night so that I could survive. Anything else would have broken me.”
She’s probably right about that. That’s probably exactly what her body was trying to do, in order to protect her.
“And then when I did, I felt like it was too late. With everything that was happening, I felt that if I tried to get to the police station and I arrived looking like I did, after having six panic attacks, they wouldn’t believe me.
Even if they did, it would be my word against his.
There was no evidence. None of his blood.
I didn’t scratch him. There was nothing to link him to me. ”
“There could have been security-”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. He seemed too smart for that.”
“There’s more than one way to bring someone down.
I’m not going to figure out who the man is who assaulted you and go out and shoot him in the face or beat his brains in, as much as I want to.
I could find him. Online.” I don’t know the whole story, but this is already more than I ever thought she’d tell me.
It’s clearly more than she wanted to say.
Her lips draw into a thin line and a frown slashes across her brow.
“That’s exactly what I don’t want you getting mixed up with.
Someone like that, he probably has powerful friends.
You mess with one and all of a sudden, you’re the one who’s paying.
It all comes toppling down, but not for them.
I don’t want to be the reason you go back to prison. This happened years ago.”
“And you’re still paying the price for something that wasn’t your fault. You’re the victim.”
She walks over and snaps the lamp on so that she’s sure I’m seeing her. Shockingly, she sinks down to her knees right in front of me. My hands shoot out to try and tug her up, but she grasps them and holds them tight in hers.
Yeah. I’m going a whole lot of nowhere. The pleading, earnest, pained expression on her face pins me right in place.
“I’m tired of being the victim,” she spits. “I’ve been tired of it for a very long time. That’s the most frustrating point. That I’ve moved past that night in my head, mostly, but I can’t force myself to move past my apartment.”
“You did, though. You did move past it. You’re here with me.” Her hands flex against mine.
“And you’re here with me.”
“The cats and Scythe too, and his club, if we wanted them. This isn’t like before for you, and it’s not like before for me either.”
“I’ve told you the last thing I wanted to ever tell you.
” Her throat bobs with a swallow that sounds painful.
“I haven’t given you enough details, but even still, I know that you’re smart enough, talented enough, and obsessed enough, to try and find this guy.
Please don’t. I’m not just asking you. I’ll beg you. ”
“Don’t beg me. I wouldn’t do something you asked me not to do.”
“I don’t need justice. I can give myself closure.”
“What if it would stop him, though? Stop him from doing this to anyone else. What if I was careful?”
“That’s exactly what I thought you’d think and say.
That’s how it all starts. I don’t want him to hurt anyone else!
I truly don’t.” Her head whips back and forth and her nails dig in desperately against my hands.
“I wouldn’t wish what I’ve endured on anyone else in the entire world.
But I wouldn’t wish for you to go back to prison or have someone evil coming after you, hunting you, hurting you and all the people you care about. ”
“I’d protect you.”
“I’m not afraid for me. I’m afraid for my parents. My sister. Sylvie. Anyone else I may have come into contact with that they could trace. Please. Please, you have to just leave it alone.”
She’s growing more distressed. The only thing I can do is agree, even if it’s the last thing that I feel is right.
Even if it kills me, this isn’t about me.
It’s not about what I want or my moral compass.
It’s about Loreena. She bows her head over our joined hands.
She doesn’t have to say another word. God, I can’t stand for her to beg me.
She might change her mind later, or maybe she won’t, but this is her choice.
I can’t go behind her back and do this for her.
Making that decision might destroy her worse than the initial trauma ever did.
I don’t know, because I still don’t know the full story.
She’s going to need time to tell it, and that time isn’t right now.
“Okay.” I lean forward to help her up.
She lets me wrap my arms around her. She nestles her head onto my shoulder. Her breaths come too rapid and too forceful, but within a few minutes, they smooth out. I could listen to her breathe for the rest of my life.
“Okay?” she breathes, disbelief coloring her tone. “Or okay for right now?”
My lungs compress, forcing all the breath out of them. “I’ll never do anything you don’t want me to do, but if you should ever ask me for any kind of help in the future, no matter what it is, I’ll be there for you.”
It’s the most honest answer that I can give, and when her breath unspools in a long sigh, I know that she appreciates that I didn’t lie to her.
I don’t know how long she’ll let me hold her for, our body heat blending together, our hearts beating so close. The world might say we only have letters, an afternoon, and a single twenty-four hour span between us, but that’s not true.
Fate can go fuck itself, but this is the one time that I even half believe that I was made entirely to end up right here, right now, to exist right next to another person.