Chapter 20 #3
“Here.” He held it out for me, his brow still creased and leaving no room for argument. When I didn’t reach for it, he huffed in agitation. “You’re freezing in your ‘height of fashion,’ Lex.”
Another flurry buffeted me, and I snatched up his shirt gratefully. It was only temporary, anyway. Just long enough to keep my teeth from chattering until we’d finished discussing all the things we didn’t want to risk the listening devices in the house picking up.
The shirt was surprisingly soft. Still warm from his body heat, too. It smelled like laundry detergent and his intoxicating cologne, and it barely buttoned over my tummy.
I wanted to keep it forever.
He watched in silence until I’d fastened the last button. A muscle in his jaw flickered, and he sucked in a breath. In for four. Hold for two. Out for eight.
Was he afraid I'd wrinkle it or something? Irreparably ruin it?
“Thank you,” I mumbled, picking at imaginary lint on the sleeve so I wouldn’t have to look at him. “I’ll wash it after this.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he ground out, his voice a touch strained until he cleared his throat. “You said Gauthier doesn’t write his recipes down?”
I struggled to my feet, my body protesting the abuse it had sustained today, and my leg having gone numb from laying on my side. “Nope. I’m not even sure how he teaches his chefs how to make the food after they’ve signed the NDA.”
Colt followed my lead, still standing close for ease of communication.
He hadn’t moved any closer to the house yet, so I didn’t, either.
“So, what you’re saying is, taking Gauthier out will also take his drugs off the market for the foreseeable future?
If there were any successful copycats, they would’ve leaked their product by now. ”
“Right. Take him out of commission, and all his recipes and tweaks go with him.”
“Which is all the more reason for him to be cautious, and why his customers don’t mind lending muscle toward his protection.”
I hugged my elbows and huffed. Goosebumps pimpled my skin, the growing unease in my belly sharp and unignorable.
This storm was going to be a doozy. “Exactly. If anyone tried to get through any of them to go after Gauthier, they’d unleash the power of at least one, if not all of the gangs that loaned the guards.
And Gauthier and his customers want everyone to know that. It’s a suicide mission.”
Colt nodded somberly. “And yet, here we are.”
Right. We were the ones currently on the suicide mission. Either we got Gauthier and went ghost afterward, or we died in the process. Simple.
I hesitated, thinking of my various conversations with Vivienne throughout the day.
“I… have a hunch. A gut feeling, maybe. And I know that isn’t super helpful since I can’t prove anything, but I think Charles started messing with drugs for the extra income.
Apparently they’ve been trying to conceive for a long time, and fertility treatments are super expensive.
Even for someone with two successful restaurants. ”
A few fat drops of rain splattered on the ground. Colt cocked his head to the side. “So you think he’s only doing it to pay off a debt?”
“Maybe.” I shrugged. A drop fell on my shoulder. “At least, initially. Now, he might be in so deep with all the big players that to get out is suicide, too. And with their miracle baby finally on the way, he’ll do anything to stay alive.”
“That’s pretty optimistic, don’t you think?
” Colt finally budged, gravitating toward the back door and closer to the protection of the roof’s meager overhang.
He paused, watching me carefully as I followed him to the concrete slab at the base of the stairs.
“Are you sure you’re not trying to find some way to cast Charles as a better guy than he really is because of your friendship with Vivienne? ”
My heart sank even as my hackles raised.
He hadn’t the foggiest idea of the inner conflict I’d been warring against all day.
He wasn’t close to Charles. He hadn’t gotten to know him like I had Vivienne.
As much as I’d bolstered my resolve to do what needed to be done, thinking of double-crossing Vivienne turned my stomach.
“It’s just a feeling,” I defended, choosing not to answer his overly perceptive question. “He’s still the one responsible for the drugs that killed my brother. That won’t change, whether he’s being coerced into doing it or not.”
“And what about Vivienne?”
My blood ran cold. Raindrops fell faster around us, peppering our clothes and skin. “What about her?”
“Are you going to be able to do what’s needed to take Charles down?”
In one sentence, he’d captured the doubts that had been chewing at me, eating through me like acid with each minute spent in her company. When the time came, would I really be able to do it? Would I be able to sell my soul to the Greater Good?
“I don’t even know if Vivienne knows about his side business,” I deflected. “With his restaurants, he’s got the perfect cover and reason to be experimenting in labs and whatnot.”
He leveled me with a stare, unflinching as rain wet his face. “That doesn’t change the answer to my question, Lex.”
I grit my teeth and sighed. The back of my eyes stung, and my blood pressure spiked. The blackening sky didn’t help. “What must it be like to be you? To see things in such black and white and never second-guess?”
He rotated so he took the brunt of the rain, leaving me leaning against the relative safety of the house with him as my shield. “There isn’t any gray area to this to begin with. Gauthier is breaking the law and costing people their lives. You knew what we’d have to do coming into this.”
My nostrils flared. Indignance and outrage sparked under my lungs.
How could I possibly expect him to understand?
He was the cold, hard logic half of this partnership.
He hadn’t looked in her eyes as she showed the scars on her heart—hadn’t received her kindness time and time again.
Logically, I knew betraying Vivienne was what I had to do.
But it felt… wrong . Viscerally, despicably wrong .
“Remember what McBride said about the lines between what’s real and what’s fake getting blurred,” Colt warned, his voice as gentle as it was reproachful.
A raindrop dripped from his hair and slid down his temple.
“Your relationship with Vivienne is fake, no matter how real it feels. She’s friends with Lex Martin , a made-up cover for the sole purpose of this assignment.
She doesn’t even know the real you, so how could she really be your friend? ”
My eyes closed as his words cut deep. Not because they were barbed or malicious, but because they were true. Insults and sarcasm could wound, sure, but truth could level cities. Slice clean through to your core.
Vivienne didn’t know the real me. Her kindness and friendship had never been for me. It had been for a fictitious dance instructor from Nebraska, the mask I wore around her like a second skin. Nothing about our relationship was real.
Just like Colt and me.
We were two agents thrown together for this assignment, working toward a common goal.
We weren’t a couple. We weren’t a family.
No matter how right it felt to meld our lives together, to eat together and bicker and laugh and imagine us being something more, none of it was real.
I had no husband, no baby on the way. He was playing his part, and I was getting sucked into the fantasy.
And maybe that’s why it hurt so much. He was the only one who knew the real me—the workhorse and hot mess.
I couldn’t keep my work-sona and my personal life separate as easily anymore, so I’d let my walls down altogether.
I’d shown him my soft underbelly. Cried in front of him.
In return, he’d let the corner of his mask slip.
Just enough to glimpse a sliver of who he really was, and that was all it took for me to dive head-first into the fantasy.
Maybe I’d wanted to be wanted so badly—to be seen so badly—it hadn’t mattered how little I truly knew about him. I’d convinced myself that the miniscule peek I’d gotten of the real him was enough—that it made all of what I’d learned about him real.
But the Colt I’d fallen for wasn’t the real Colt at all. It couldn’t be, not entirely. Because, like he’d said, none of this was real. None of it.
And I seemed to be the only one having a hard time remembering that.
My heart shrank down a size and froze into a block of ice.
I squared my shoulders and opened my eyes, wiping my expression of all emotion.
The emptiness I’d managed while chatting with Vivienne earlier returned and magnified until my flat voice reverberated against its barren walls. “I’ll do what it takes.”
I climbed the stairs to the backdoor, no longer caring about the rain drenching me as it fell in sheets.
I cast a glance behind me before I went inside.
Colt hadn’t moved from his position, his T-shirt now completely soaked through and his normally meticulous hair plastered against his forehead as he watched me leave.
The furrow in his brow had deepened, and his frown sharpened, but still he didn’t move.
I kept my expression neutral as I nodded at him. I was here to do a job. Not fall for my coworker, not make friends or play house or pretend I had something worth coming home to besides my goldfish.
Just a job.
And I’d do well to remember that.