She swallowed. “Better late than never.”
“And you told him that he should give me my old job back. And that if I couldn’t work with you, given our history, then you would quit. You told him that I was far more valuable to the Company than you are.”
“All true.”
He searched her eyes. “Why, Chels? Why would you do that?”
She was tempted to drop his gaze and look out over the water. He’d always been able to see too much. But she owed him honesty. Not just the honesty of her words but the honesty of her eyes. So she held his penetrating stare without wavering. “Because I know you’ve been worried about your future, about what you’ll do after Spider is apprehended and BKI shuts its doors. I put myself and the responsibility I feel for my mother ahead of you once. I refuse to do that again. You deserve your old job back, Dagan. You deserve…everything. Anything you want.”
She desperately wanted him to tell her that what he wanted washer. But that’s not what he said. What he said was, “And what will you do? Go to work for the DOD? They pay worse than the CIA.”
“So I’ll work a second job. I’m not too proud to bag groceries at the Piggly Wiggly. Besides, you’re not the only one who thinks you need a little redemption. Right about now, I could use some too.”
“You shoulder too much of the burden for what happened back then. I should have seen the red flags Waleed waved in my direction. Seen that the Intel he gave me wasn’t actionable or important.”
That sounded an awful lot like there was reason to…hope. Her breath stuttered in her lungs. “Waleed’s success at becoming a double agent was a failure on the parts ofmanypeople. That doesn’t change the fact that onceIknew what was happening, I should have done something about it.”
“You did. You told your direct superior just like you’d been trained to do.”
“But afterward I should have done more. I should’ve gone over Edens’s head. I should have told—”
“If you had told, your reputation and any chance of a career in the Intelligence Community would have been obliterated. Edens would have made certain of that.” Okay, and thatreallysounded like a reason to hope. Tears she refused to let fall backed up behind her eyes. “I understand why you did what you did back then, Chels.” Her chest was caught in a vise grip. “Hell, put in the same position with the same familial responsibilities and pressures, I would have done the same thing. But what I can’t wrap my head around, what I can’t seem to get past, is that youkeptthe secret even after Edens was gone. Why? Why didn’t you tell me once your job was safe? Why the hell were you so…so…”
“Cowardly?”
“Yes!” he thundered, pushing to a stand and glaring down at her. His chest worked like bellows. His nostrils flared. She wanted so much to reach out and grab his hand that she had to curl her fingers around the edge of the bench and hold on tight. “The Chelsea I know and love isn’t a coward. The Chelsea I know and love doesn’t back down from confrontation. The Chelsea I know—”
“I was so ashamed,” she cut him off. Now there was nothing she could do to hold back the tears. They flowed freely down her cheeks and plopped onto her sweater. “I had kept that secret for so long, and I was… Iamso racked with guilt. I’ve always respected you so much, Dagan. I’ve always loved you so much that I couldn’t bring myself to admit to something that I knew would make you look at me the way you’re looking at me right now.” A muscle twitched beneath his eye. “And I understand if you hate me for that weakness. I hate myself.”
“I don’t hate you.”
The laugh that burst from the back of her tear-clogged throat was bitter. “Well, that’s something, I guess.”
For a long time, neither of them spoke. The only sounds were her sniffles and the softlap-lapof the water beneath the dock. Then Dagan said, “You should have told me the minute Edens was out of the picture.”
She nodded. “I know I should have. Hindsight being twenty-twenty and all that.”
He blew out a gusty breath. “I’m mad as hell at you for not trusting me enough to tell me sooner, for thinking that I wouldn’t understand the horrible position Edens put you in.”
“And you have every right to be mad as hell.”
“But you could have kept the secret forever. I would have never known. I would have gone on thinking that you…that we…”
“I couldn’t let you love me without knowing therealme. Warts and all.” She picked at the hem of her sweater. She couldn’t look at him. She knew what came next. She knew he would tell her that this was something he couldn’t get over. That she wasn’t the woman he thought she was.
“You took a big risk going to Director Russell with the truth. He could have blamed you as much as Edens for failing to take action. He could have fired you on the spot and made sure you never got another job in Intelligence.”
“It would have been worth it if it got you your job back. If it gave you the future you wanted.”
“You really do love me, don’t you?”
His image was blurred by her tears. “With all my heart. All my cowardly, weak, wide-open heart. I always have.”
He nodded. And when he didn’t say he loved her too, she thought she heard the sound of the first nail being hammered into the lid of a coffin. Inside that coffin was what remained of his feelings for her.
It hurt. It hurt so badly she almost wanted to die.
“You know,” he said after a bit, “someone wise once told me that the past is written. That what’s done is done. We can’t change it. But the future? Well, that’s unwritten. We canchoosewhat happens.”
