Chapter 13 I Believe You #2
Something went out of him when I said it. Not relief exactly. More like he’d finally been allowed to stop bracing for something. I reached across the counter and put my hand over his. He turned his hand up under mine and held on.
“I went to Murphy.”
That was the last thing I’d expected, and it must have shown, because he offered me an embarrassed smirk.
He told me the rest quiet and even, watching me the whole way through.
That he’d gone to Murphy on his own, and told him about us.
Not the program. Us. That we were together.
That he’d laid out what Adam had really been doing, not just to us but going back years, cases that fell apart, files that didn’t add up, evidence that went missing and got hung on somebody else.
And that Murphy had believed him, and the two of them had been quietly building a case ever since.
Murphy knew. Our inspector had known about us, I felt a bit weird about it.
“And this morning was the last of it,” he said.
“The last lie I’m ever telling about any of this.
” He made himself keep going. “I found out where Adam would be, and I put myself in front of him looking like the worst version of myself. Falling apart. Wrecked over you. I let him think he’d done it, let him sit there and tell me he was taking you back, and I cried and I begged him, because I needed him sure he’d already won.
” He stopped. “And then I sat in the car, and it caught up with me, the real version, and I couldn’t carry it home like that.
I drove around most of the day, working up to walking through our door. ”
“Why.” I didn’t have the rest of it. “Why would you do that to yourself?”
“Because it was the only way left to protect you.” It came fast and plain, like he’d said it to himself a hundred times already.
“I couldn’t just warn you off him. I tried that, right here, and it nearly ended us.
And I couldn’t take him on in the open, not with what my word’s worth in that building with his name in my mouth.
I made him think he’d flattened me, that he’s won, and got careless.
That’s the only way Murphy and I get to touch him.
” He shook his head once. “But it isn’t done, Luke.
He’s careful, and he’s patient, and if he feels the ground move before we’re ready, he walks, and we’re back to my word against his.
That’s what I’ve been carrying. I should have told you every step, and I didn’t.
I broke the same promise you came in here to break, and I broke it first.”
I should have been angrier than I was. Part of me was, the part still catching up to it, that he’d run a con on Adam and cried in front of him on purpose and carried the whole thing home and stood in the doorway and tried to smile at me.
But I’d ridden next to Adam Wright for four years, and the cop in me was already moving.
“Then don’t let him feel it coming,” I said.
“I can give you the rest of him, the part you can’t get from the outside.
He can’t stand to lose something he’s decided is his.
It’s the one place he isn’t careful. Right now, he thinks he’s got me back.
So don’t fight that. Let him watch it collapse, somewhere he has to stand there and see it, and he’ll do something he can’t take back. ”
Ryan looked at me for a long moment, and something on his face eased. “That’s the piece I couldn’t get on my own.”
“You couldn’t get it because you never had to live with him.
I did.” I let that sit and made myself say the harder part.
“But we’re done doing this to each other.
Both of us. You decided what I could take, I decided what you could take, over the same man, and it nearly cost us everything, and neither of us had even done a thing wrong.
If you know something, I know it. That’s the deal now, or the rest of it doesn’t mean anything. ”
He didn’t answer right away. That was the thing I needed and hadn’t known to ask for, that he didn’t just say yes to make it stop. He took a second with it, like it weighed something.
“That’s the deal,” he said. “I should have given it to you a long time ago.”
We stood there in the quiet. For the first time since Adam came back there was nothing left unsaid between us. I’d forgotten what the place felt like with nothing hidden in it.
“Come here,” I said.
He crossed to me and I pulled him in, and this time neither of us was careful about it. He put his face against my neck, and I felt him let go. I held on. I’d come so close to losing this. He’d been as scared as I was the whole time. He was solid and warm and mine, and I got to keep him.
“I’ve got you,” I said into his hair.
“I know,” he said, against my neck.
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”
“I’m sorry I did things behind your back.” His arms tightened. “We’ll get better at it.”
“We’d better,” I said. “We’ve got a man to take down, and I’m no good to you if I’m the thing you’re busy protecting.”
He laughed against my throat, low and tired and real, the first easy sound either of us had made in a long time. Then he pulled back and looked at me, and for a second he looked like himself again, and I’d missed that. I put a hand in his hair and pulled his mouth to mine.
It started slow. Careful, both of us, like we were making sure the other was really there.
Then his hands came up under my shirt, warm against my skin, and careful was done.
I backed him into the counter and kissed him the way I’d been wanting to and hadn’t let myself, and he gave it back just as hard, and I quit thinking about Adam and the plan and the morning.
There was just Ryan, here, wanting me as plainly as I wanted him.
He pulled back just far enough to breathe, his forehead against mine. I could feel his heart going, and my own going with it.
“Come to bed,” he said, low and enticing.
So, I took him to bed. Everything else could keep until morning.