“Bentrustedme.” She made herself say it. “I promised I would help him. And instead, his uncle George was killed when he surrendered to the authorities.”
“Some surrender. The guy resisted.”
Her brows tweaked together. “I don’t say that in the book.”
His gaze met hers. Flat, black, unreadable. “I watched the entry go down. On TV.”
That made sense. He was a cop. On a SWAT team, he’d said. He might have followed the situation out of professional interest. But she was missing something. She watched his hands ball in his pockets, making the fabric of his uniform slacks stretch across his thighs. Hands betrayed emotion when the face did not. “The tapes don’t show everything,” she said. “Some people say the SWAT team overreacted.”
“That’s on them, not on you.”
She knew that. She’d talked about survivor guilt with her therapist. But...
“Ben’s mother blames me. Her brother is dead, her son is in jail, because they listened to me.”
“Bullshit. That day at the bank, you did everything you could. You kept your head. You got three thugs with guns focused on you. You talked them into letting seven other people go. You put yourself out there for some strangers, even though it meant your brother, your mother, might not see you again.”
“You’re making me sound brave. I’m not. There just wasn’t anybody else who could talk to them. Who was trained at talking with people.”
“Well, you are good at that,” he said very dryly.
She laughed shakily, the sound scraping through the ground glass in her throat. “I’m sorry. I’m talking too much.”
He smiled slightly. “It’s all good. You got something to say, you say it.”
“I wish. I haven’t been able to talk about my feelings or write about them or anything else in months.”
“Talk about your feelings,” he repeated without expression.
“Yes.” She expelled her breath, a huff of amusement and frustration. “I’ve been on a book tour. I’m supposed to be connecting with people, inspiring them, and I’ve been reading off a script for so long I can’t remember what my feelings even are anymore. I’m numb. All I can manage is sound bites.”
All the same questions, over and over, scraping her nerves, probing barely healed wounds.Tell me how it felt... Were you close... I’ve heard you write to him in prison...
“So? You don’t owe a pound of flesh every time somebody asks you a question. You give them the answer that takes off the least amount of skin. Otherwise you bleed to death.”
Oh, God. She stared at him, stricken. That was it exactly. “Or you cauterize your emotions until you can’t feel anything anymore.”
“That’s not you.”
She wanted desperately to believe him. “How do you know? Traumachangesyou.” From someone who wanted to make a difference in the world to someone who couldn’t bring herself to leave her hotel room.
“It can,” Jack agreed calmly, his gaze steady on hers. “Or it can show you who you really are.”
She winced. “Hostage Girl.” Captive to her fears.
He shook his head. “That’s not who I see.” His fingers traced the silver coil of her ear cuff; traveled her jaw to the point of her chin. The solid heat of his body tugged at her like gravity. His pupils were wide and dark. She swayed, lost in their darkness.
“You’re not afraid to get involved. You’re not afraid to get hurt. All those feelings you say you don’t feel? They’re all in there.”
“In my book.”
“In you. You’ve got something inside you,” he murmured. “A spark. A heart. You care in an uncaring world. That takes a kind of courage most people will never have.”
The look on his face tightened her heart in her chest. She struggled to speak. To breathe.
He released her chin, stepping back. “You need more coffee?”
She blinked, rocked off balance. “Um. No. Thanks.”
