“And all this time, you kept quiet. You didn’t say a word.”
“I was afraid, I was afraid it would ruin you. And then god forgive me, I was afraid it would ruin me, too. So tell me, tell me, what else could I do?” he asked. And he sounded so broken, it was all she could do not go to him. She had to restrain herself from doing it; she had to glue her feet to the floor. But she was glad that she managed. It made so much easier to be angry instead of a sobbing wreck, as she burst out with her last words.
“You could havetold me, you ridiculous fuckhead. You could have told me so I could thank the man whosaved my goddamn life.”
And then she just flung herself at him.
Like a hug, disguised as a punch.
* * *
He wouldn’t talk, at first. As if the whole business had been trapped inside him so long that even her knowing couldn’t dislodge it. She had to persuade him into other things, before it finally started to come loose—like sitting down on the side of his tub so she could see to his pretty gross looking wound.
But still, it took some doing.
She had to come at it slowly, from the side.
“So. Anything you feel like talking about?”
“I was thinking a good topic would be: how generous you are.”
“If you’re saying that because you still think you’ve committed some egregious crime against my person by killing the man who attacked me, I’m just going to go ahead and cut you off right there. Formultiplereasons.”
“Multiple? I can’t even think ofone.”
“Then let me help you out. For starters, the wordskilling the man who attacked meare in there. And they basically mean that instead of me dying, I am now alive.”
She looked up at him then, sure that he would have given an inch for that. But his expression was just as despairing as it had been when she first told him she knew. If anything, it looked worse—as if prolonged exposure to all of this was eating him alive.
Or was it just her acceptance that was doing it?
He sure seemed like he was hell-bent on destroying it, every time he opened his mouth. “Yeah, and you wouldn’t have even been in danger if it wasn’t for me.”
“Ah, so that’s what you’re going to go with.”
“I’m not going with anything. It’s true.”
“Then you made him do that.”
“I didn’t make him, but—”
“You knew he was likely to attack me, but told him to go upstairs, anyway.”
“No, of course not, of course I didn’t, I could never, I just—”
“Oh I see. You just indulged his worst instincts beforehand.”
He held up a hand, at that. Closed his eyes, briefly.
Though when he opened them again, he didn’t look any better for it. And he didn’t sound any better, either. “I get it, all right. I wasn’t directly responsible for anything. But I still worked for a man who hired men like that. I still went where he told me to go and did what he wanted me to do. And no amount of telling myself that I did those things for reasons other than petty crime can dissolve that.”
She didn’t mean to laugh, once he’d finished speaking. He was clearly suffering, and it felt mean to do it. But the problem was: everything he said only seemed to make the secret he’d kept seem more foolish.
“You weren’t even a thief, were you? Oh my god, you were still working for the government. You were like, infiltrating a criminal organization.”
“I don’t see what difference that makes.”
“To be honest, I don’t, either. If you’d been some kind of career criminal who stole people’s jewelry for a living, I’d still love you. Nothing would change for me. But the problem is,youthink it should. You thinkworsethan that. You think that doing a perfectly legitimate thing puts you completely beyond love.”
