“That’s why I can’t do this without you.” He swept my sodden hair back from my temples and then sank his fingers into it, his skin warming where the rain had chilled me. “I need that big fucking brain of yours. I need us to be a team. I needyoubecause I’m in fuckin’ love with you. I did it all for you!”
My sobbing stopped but the tears kept coming, welling up and making my vision swim. “I—I’m in love with you, too,” I croaked, knowing the truth of it the moment I said it. “But I can’t—Sean, once this is over, I can’t have all this in my life.” I imagined people like theSerbians, coming to our apartment in the dead of night. “I can’t have it in Kayley’s life.”
He gripped my shoulders. “We sort this out and save Kayley,” he said, “and I’ll go fuckin’ straight. I’ll leave all this shit behind, if that’s what it takes to be with you.”
I gaped up at him. “Wh—What?But that’swho you are!You said you didn’t know anything else!”
He lifted his head just a fraction, challenging me. “Thought you said I could learn?”
I felt my jaw drop open and then I was grabbing hold of him and pressing my soaked body against his, sobbing with relief and fragile hope into his chest.
57
LOUISE
Sean tookme back to my apartment so I could comfort Kayley. When I thought of how I’d broken down in front of her, my stomach knotted. I was supposed to be her mom, unshakeable and stoic. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “Sorry you had to see me—”
She punched me surprisingly hard in the chest. “You idiot,” she said. “Whoever said you weren’t allowed tocry?”And she hugged me, the warmth of her body chasing away some of the rain’s chill.
When she let me go, she scrunched up her forehead and said, “So now you two have to go and fix things?”
Sean and I looked at each other. “Yeah,” I said. “We have to come up with a plan.”
Kayley nodded firmly. “Then sit down,” she said. “I’ll get you towels and coffee.”
I started to gently push her into a chair. “No. I can do that.”
“Damnit, Louise,let me help!I get why you won’t let me be involved. But I can make a freaking cup of coffee for you while you think! Why do you never, ever, let me doanything?”
I stood there opening and closing my mouth for a few seconds, then looked at Sean. He was no help—he just exchanged a look with Kayley and then nodded at me firmly.
I sat down. “I guess...I just wanted you to be able to be a kid,” I said in a small voice.
“Well...thanks. Really. But I think you need all the help you can get today. Okay?” And she stomped off into the kitchen.
“God…” I said, stunned.
“She reminds me of someone,” rumbled Sean. “Now let’s sort this out.”
I sighed and shook my head. “Even if, by some miracle, wecanget the drugs back off Malone, what the hell do we do with them? No one’s going to want to touch them once they’ve been stolen from him.Andhe’ll be after us.”
Sean put his hand on mine. “One thing at a time,” he said. “First, we need to find out where our drugs are.”
“How do we dothat?”
Sean thought about it while we toweled ourselves dry and changed clothes, then sipped the coffee Kayley brought us. “Malone’ll want to split up the crop and sell it. He’s probably already called the bigger dealers. I could ask them.”
“Why would they tell you?”
Sean looked at me seriously. “Because I’m going to be fuckin’ persuasive.” That same look came into his eyes, the one that scared the ever-living-fuckout of people. The one that had scared the hell out of me, when I first met him. But now, knowing that cold rage was fueled by me, by the need to get justice for me...was it wrong that it made a little flash of heat go through me?
I stood up and headed towards the door. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Sean blocked my path. “Where areyougoing?I’mgoing to talk to him. I’ll call you.”
“No way. You’re not sidelining me now. We’re in this together.”
“This’ll be dangerous. I’m not having you hurt.”
