22. Lucie
No. I’m not.
Those few words ripped into her soul and severed her carotid artery. She wanted the tears to fall, but they never came. She focused on fixing him up, so she could get him out as fast as possible. She wanted to be alone and mourn her shattered dreams.
Stupid, stupid girl, she scolded herself.
She’d fallen in love with a liar. She’d known he was too good to be true. The fantasy around him crumbled—a house of cards taken down by one gust of wind.
After she fixed him, she would kick him out and tell him never to come back.
Even though she knew that it would rip the last part of her heart she had saved just for him.
Then she would rip up every picture she had drawn of him.
Throw away every petal. Every shell. He didn’t deserve to know the way she felt about him.
She let herself believe in him. His easy smile, a spark in his eyes. How she felt safe around him. If she was ever going to tell someone about her dad, it was going to be him. Hurt and betrayal crashed into each other like waves against jagged rocks.
“Hold still,” she snapped. Anger bubbled up again, hot and overwhelming. How could he do this to her? How could he lie to her? Did he ever actually care for her?
“Lu, let me—” He tried to grab the gauze from her. She pulled it away.
“No.”
“If you just?—”
“No. You lied to me,” she said, her voice wobbling.
“If I could?—”
“After I’m done with this, I want you to leave and never come back,” she shot back.
Finn held onto her hand.
“Lucie, I have never begged anyone in my life. But I am begging you, sweetheart, please listen to me,” Finn pleaded.
“If you still want to kick me out after and never see me again, I will stay away from you.” He leaned his head against her bed and let out a labored sigh.
“I’m so sorry I brought you into this. I wanted to keep you safe. ”
“I’m not fragile,” she bit out.
Finn looked up at her, desperation flickering in his eyes. He looked scared.
Vulnerable.
It only made her angrier.
“I know you’re not,” he confessed, reaching up to tuck a piece of her hair behind her ear. She flinched, and something died inside his eyes.
“I’m going to numb it, “ she added, already swabbing the skin.
He nodded.
It was the last of her lidocaine. She’d been saving it.
She injected half an anesthetic around the entry wound, watching his reaction closely. His stupid, perfect, stubbled jaw clenched, but he didn’t make a sound.
“You have until I finish this,” she said, her voice tight and controlled, not at all the way she felt. She needed to take a long shower after this. Shower cries were the most therapeutic.
“I work for a group called the Way Station,” he started. Lucie had never heard of it. “I do help people—people who have been hurt, lost, or targeted. I didn’t lie about that.”
He paused, trying to gauge her reaction, but Lucie kept her eyes and hands busy with his wound. Refusing to look at him. She didn’t trust herself to look up into his warm eyes and not forgive him.
“Go on,” she said as she tied the first knot. The bullet had pierced his tattoo of a hammerhead shark. The same one she had traced while she’d kissed him that morning. The tattoo would never be the same again.
“There’s a place,” Finn continued, his voice softening.
“It used to be an old district house in the Washington and Jefferson National Forest. It’s the place I was telling you about this morning.
It’s my home.” She peeked up at him through her eyelashes.
“Nobody else knows about this. It’s government property.
Listed as an inactive location, but it’s a witness protection site, called the Way Station. ”
Another stitch. Pull. Tie. The rhythm helped her focus as he explained his story as she closed around the wound millimeter by millimeter.
“I work as an agent for Atlas,” he said, sucking in a sharp breath.
“That CIA place?” she asked, finally looking him in the eye.
“Yeah,” he winced as she placed the final stitch on his front with a knot and clipped the thread.
He pulled out his wallet and showed her his Atlas ID badge. It could have been a forgery, but it looked real. But she had been good at identifying knock-off IDs from teenagers trying to buy beer. Still, she needed a lot more proof than a piece of plastic.
“So you are a secret agent,” she said, smacking his arm.
“Ouch!” he moaned. “I told you I was last night.”
“I thought you were just messing with me. Making a joke,” she snapped.
“Sometimes I wish I were,” he confessed, throwing his head back onto her bed.
“Keep going,” she seethed, rethreading the suture needle.
“We track a group called Legion. Evil people who kill. Kidnap. Torture without remorse,” Finn continued, focusing on breathing through his nose.
Lucie’s stomach churned. She’d heard about things like this on the news—strange disappearances and unexplainable violence that always seemed to be brushed aside. Now, here was Finn, bleeding all over her carpet, telling her it was all true.
“My group and I go in and save people affected by Legion.” Each word was tight. Sweat beading down his brow. “I’m their general. We find people and give them new identities. New homes. A safe place.”
His pain made her throat tighten, but she kept going, focusing on bringing the edges of the wound together, minimizing scarring, then moved around to his back.
“That’s why you’ve been so secretive,” she said, pulling up on the thread.
“Everyone at the Way Station has lost someone to Legion, except for me,” Finn rambled.
“My friend Sabrina, who I told you about, her father runs the place. They’re the ones who took me in.
For some reason, Henry saw something in me.
Thought I could help their cause. I didn’t have a family or purpose before them.
Now I get to help people. It’s more of a life than I thought I deserved. ”
Lucie paused, her heart betraying her for a moment.
She could almost see it, the way he described it: a sanctuary hidden from the rest of the world, full of life and hope.
She could imagine herself there, tending to the sick, helping the children.
For a fleeting second, she wanted to be part of it, to be somewhere that felt safe and real, where she could make a difference.
But then the anger returned, hot and suffocating, reminding her that it was all built on lies.
“What happened tonight?” she asked, forcing her voice to remain even. “Why are you here, bleeding all over my floor?”
Finn hesitated, his eyes clouding with the weight of the truth.
“There was a family. We got a tip that Legion agents were closing in on them. We went to get them out. At this point, the family is safely at the Way Station, but I stayed behind to look for evidence. Two agents ambushed me. It got . . . messy,” he panted.
“What happened to them?” she asked.
Finn’s golden eyes muted.
Lucie’s hands stilled, and she looked up at him, horrified. “You killed them?”
Finn flinched at her tone like the words were a physical blow. “I didn’t have a choice. If I hadn’t?—”
Lucie leaned back, her hands shaking. She didn’t know what to think or feel.
Finn wasn’t who she thought he was, and now she was standing in the middle of a nightmare she couldn’t wake from.
She was going to be sick, torn between the guy she was falling for and the man who had lied to her and had blood on his hands.
Only then did she notice the blood on her own hands, the step she’d made crossing into his world, whether she meant to or not.