Page 38 of Trust my Heart

I pushed on to the last of it.

“And I came home that night, and I looked at you and I decided not to tell you any of it because I was afraid that it would finish breaking what remained of us. Because I wanted you back more than I wanted to be honest about what happened.” I stopped. “Which is the exact thing I did to you before. Deciding for you what you could handle. I knew it while I was doing it and I did it anyway. I’m sorry.”

I’d meant to stop there and let him have it, whatever came. I’d braced for the version of his face I figured I’d earned, cold and shut, the way it had gone during the worst of the silence. I stood there and waited for it.

For a second it looked like I’d get it. Something crossed his face and went dark, and he looked away from me, down at the counter, and his jaw worked like he was holding something down. The kitchen went dead quiet. I was certain I’d finally done it, certain this was the end of us.

Then he breathed out, slow, and got hold of whatever it was. When he looked up it had cost him to put it down, but it was down.

He came around the counter, didn’t say one word about the kiss. He put his hand flat on the side of my neck, and he looked at me like I was the one who’d been hurt.

“You, deciding for me what I could handle, knowing it and doing it anyway.” His thumb moved once at my jaw. “I’ve done the exact same thing to you. So whatever you were expecting from me, you’re not getting it. I haven’t got the standing.”

“It wasn’t you, Ryan. It’s my fault. I must have let him on somehow, gave him ideas or false hope. I let him get close enough to…”

“There was no car.”

I stopped. His hand was warm on the side of my neck and I didn’t want him to take it away.

“There was no car,” he said again, quiet and certain. “He didn’t pull you back from anything. Nothing came down that street. He set the whole thing up, the corner, the grab, all of it, and you suspected it was wrong the second it happened, and you were right. You didn’t imagine one thing.”

I heard the words and I couldn’t make them fit anywhere.

“How do you know that?”

He took his hand back, slow, shrugged out of his coat and dropped it over the back of a chair, and stepped around to his side of the counter again. I watched him decide to tell me, and what it took out of him to start.

“Somebody slid photographs under our door while we slept.” He said it flat, watching my face. Then he gave me the rest of it, low and steady. The pictures of that corner, of the kiss. That he’d never believed them, not for a second, that he’d known it wasn’t real before he was done looking. That he’d kept them from me and been working it on his own since. That there was more than he could put on the counter tonight, and he’d show me all of it right now if I wanted, and I didn’t have to take one word of it on faith.

I stood there still feeling where his hand had been on my neck, wanting it back.

Once, I’d have needed to see it. Every photograph, every date, every reason, laid out where I could check it, because I’d given everything to a man who was good with words and I’d promised myself I’d never take another one on faith. That promise had run my whole life since. It was half of why I kept everyone at a distance.

But the man in front of me wasn’t the one I’d learned to guard against.

“I don’t need to see it,” I said.

He blinked.

“I believe you.” It came out rougher than I wanted. “I don’t need the pictures, Ryan. I know what he is now. I’ve known longer than you have, I just never let myself turn around and look at it.” I had to stop for a second. “So no. I don’t need proof. I believe you.”

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.