Chapter Twenty-Two
He shouldn’t have let it get this far.
He shouldn’t have given her the wrong idea, but she’d been so close to falling apart, Adrial didn’t know how else to keep her together.
And it’d worked. Those long stretches of his moans and her gasps and their mutual ecstasy wouldn’t only play on repeat in his head forever, but they’d grounded her in a way nothing else could.
But love? Winnie didn’t love him. He didn’t deserve that from her.
She stretched for the bedside lamp and turned it on, her movements accentuating all those curves he’d taken advantage of in that damn shower. “A mistake?”
He grabbed for the jeans and T-shirt he’d discarded before climbing into bed with her and held in a groan as he stretched the stitches in his shoulder.
His clothes were still in the dryer, nowhere near close to being done, but he couldn’t stay here.
Not when she was looking at him as though he’d just torn her heart from her chest. “You can’t love me, Winnie. ”
The open hurt left her face in an instant. Replaced by something far more dangerous. Her skin flushed a pretty pink as she got out of the bed, showcasing those long legs he’d enjoyed wrapped around his waist a mere hour ago. “Please, go on. Tell me how I feel about you then.”
Hell. He wasn’t going to survive this. Not in one piece.
Adrial shoved his legs into a pair of Arthur Hutton’s old jeans, catching the edge of his wound dressing on the coarse material.
Every cell in his body was clawing for him to put some distance between them so he could think clearly.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me. Things I’m not proud of. ”
“This coming from the man who told me you were the one person who might know me the best.” She shook her head.
The flush up her neck and into her face hadn’t eased, an obvious warning sign he was caught in the calm before the storm, but the trembling in her bottom lip told him the storm clouds were on the verge of breaking up.
That was when the real destruction hit. Crossing her arms over her chest, Winnie stood her ground between him and the door.
“Which is it, Adrial? Are you the person I think you are, or have you been lying to me this entire time?”
He didn’t know how to answer that.
And he caught the second she realized the truth.
That he’d been lying since the moment she’d walked through the door of Cold Hollow Investigations, and hell, long before that. When he’d left Black Hollow and disappeared without a word. Because he hadn’t wanted this to happen. For her to realize he wasn’t the man she’d believed him to be.
“What did you do?” Her arms fell to her sides, a hollow devastation clear in her voice. She’d whispered the question, but the words themselves stabbed through him as easily as the killer’s blades. “Just tell me. Please.”
He couldn’t keep running from this. From the shame and the lies and the secrets. Winnie might’ve set them on this path by digging into the Lila Mercer investigation, but he’d willingly walked alongside her. Held her hand. Led her to believe he was innocent in all this. “The case is unsolvable.”
She flinched as though he’d physically struck her, and that invisible knife cut deeper. This was going to hurt her, was hurting her. “What are you talking about? We have a real lead for the first time in twenty years. The killer—”
“Was telling the truth. In a way. Arthur…your dad compromised the investigation.” His heart felt as though it’d break straight from his chest. He couldn’t get a full breath, but he deserved the pain building behind his sternum.
Deserved far more than that. “He stole both key pieces of evidence that might’ve identified Lila Mercer’s killer, and I know that because… I caught him doing it.”
One second. A minute.
Winnie didn’t move, didn’t even seem to breathe.
And he couldn’t take it. Her stillness. Adrial took a step forward.
Only to be rewarded with her retreat. He could explain.
He could fix this, and then maybe one day in the future she’d forgive him, and she’d tell him she loved him all over again.
“The investigation had already been considered a cold case by the time I came on with the department, but I was so sure I could solve it, if I could just be given the chance. Arthur gave me that chance. Told me to knock myself out.” His laugh didn’t feel real.
Nothing did. “Every single day, I pored over those files. I studied the crime scene photos until they were burned in my brain, and I reinterviewed Lila Mercer’s neighbors and coworkers and the fishermen who’d found her.
I went out to the scene and searched those woods until the sun went down.
Your dad… He told me he’d never seen anyone so dedicated to the job, and part of me took that and ran with it.
He’d taken me under his wing, and I wanted to make him proud to have me as a son-in-law. To prove I was worthy of his daughter.”
Adrial waited for her say something—anything—but he’d wanted the chance to explain, and he had it.
He’d had so many opportunities to come clean, but protecting her had always won out.
Only now, he realized he hadn’t protected her at all.
He’d once again taken away her choice. “Looking back, I think that’s what scared him into acting.
It was later than I thought it was when I got back from the crime scene to the station, but I needed to return a piece of evidence I’d taken with me to the box stored in the back.
We had our wedding rehearsal dinner that night, and everyone was already there, so I knew I didn’t have a lot of time.
But when I got to the evidence lockup, Arthur was there. ”
How many times had he wished he hadn’t gone through that door? Adrial had lost count, but as he watched the silent tears slide down Winnie’s face, he realized this was the heartbreak he hadn’t been courageous enough to face the first time.
“The box he’d dragged off the shelf was labeled with some case number I didn’t recognize, so I went about my business and put the evidence back in the Lila Mercer box.
I made a joke about him not being late to the dinner, but he didn’t laugh.
” The nightmare was playing out right in front of him, as though he was living it all over again, and Adrial still couldn’t justify what he’d done.
Even after all these years. “And then I realized the evidence bag in his hand was open. He’d torn it open and removed a sample of DNA logged to whatever case he’d been in and exposed it. It was useless at that point.”
Winnie still hadn’t said anything, and his own heart was in the process of tearing through all the stitches he’d gained over the years.
The ones from realizing he’d never be good enough for Winnie, to the larger ones that’d nearly destroyed him after Katie’s and the baby’s deaths.
And the new ones from nearly losing Winnie on that ice.
They’d held him together long enough to survive, but now…
They were snapping, one by one, just from raw heartbreak on her face.
“I didn’t know what to think.” Adrial was suddenly back in his body, back in front of the woman he’d risk anything to protect but had failed so many times.
“My partner, the man I looked up to my entire career and who’d gotten me the job, the man whose daughter I was set to marry the next day, was actively destroying evidence from one of his cases, and I… I didn’t know what to do.”
Silence closed in, punctuating the hard thud of his heartbeat in his ears.
“So when the killer accused my dad of destroying evidence in the Lila Mercer case, you weren’t surprised, were you?” She shrugged into the oversize hoodie that smelled like her shampoo. “You just pretended for my sake?”
“I was never pretending. Not with you.” He couldn’t swallow past the knot lodged in his throat.
Winnie didn’t look convinced, and who could blame her?
He hadn’t earned her trust. If anything, he fully expected her to reach for her lava lamp and hurl it at his head, knowing he’d be able to handle her anger so much better than her withdrawal.
Everyone who’d ever meant anything to her had failed, and right now, it seemed she’d finally reached a point where she wasn’t even surprised anymore.
How would he live with himself knowing he’d been the one to strike that final nail in her hope that someone would come along and do better? “What was the case?”
“What?” His brain veered off course.
“The case you witnessed him destroy evidence for. What was it?” There was no agony lacing her voice anymore. No hint as to what she was feeling, and that was… He was losing her. Standing less than three feet away, and he was losing her all over again.
Adrial forced himself to focus on her question. “A home invasion. It wasn’t one of my cases so I don’t remember all the details. But I think the homeowner got the intruder with a knife before he escaped. Techs found blood at the scene but had yet to submit it to the lab.”
“Why would he do that?” Tears glimmered in her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. “Why that case? Why steal the evidence from the Lila Mercer investigation?”
Wasn’t it obvious? Adrial dared a step forward, as though approaching a wild animal set to lash out at any moment. “I think you know why, Red.”
“Don’t call me that. Don’t ever call me that again.
” She lost the leash of her anger, her words more growl than human.
The final line had been crossed, and there wasn’t any chance of going back.
“It was his DNA, wasn’t it? In the Mercer case.
On her underwear and that hair. He was the one…
” Color drained from her face, and her expression went slack a second before she centered her attention on him.
Winnie shot her hand out to the nearest wall for some kind of stability, but there was no recovering from this.
Not for her. Not ever. And he hated that he’d been the one to lead her here.
“You helped him cover it up. You knew what he’d done, and you kept it quiet.
You chose to leave like a coward instead of doing the right thing. ”
“I didn’t know he’d compromised the Mercer investigation, I give you my word, Winnie.
You have to believe me. I didn’t even know that evidence existed until you found that list in Arthur’s things the other day, but when the killer accused your dad of destroying the DNA evidence…
it wasn’t hard to imagine why.” That Arthur Hutton had potentially worked a case for twenty years in which he would’ve been the primary suspect.
Not to solve it but to ensure no one else came close to putting the pieces together.
And Adrial hadn’t seen it. Had been blinded by his partner and his future father-in-law until that day.
He swallowed against the desperation to make her understand, to give her the closure she’d been craving all these years.
That was what he did, that was his job, but this…
This felt empty. “I made a mistake, but you know exactly what would’ve happened if I reported him, Winnie.
It wouldn’t just have come back on him. It would’ve come back on you, and the people of this town had already made your life hell.
I couldn’t watch them turn against you, and I couldn’t be the one to ruin your relationship with your dad.
So I did the only thing I thought would save you that pain.
I left. That night, I called up a friend in Chicago and had him pull strings with CPD.
I was on a plane within a couple of hours.
I thought… I thought you’d be better off without me. ”
Closing the distance between them, Winnie craned her head back to look up at him, all emotion wiped from her face. “You didn’t leave to save me pain, Adrial. You left to save yourself. And now, you can do what you do best. Get out.”