“Vi, what I saw yesterday was a stack of memos and emails that show a city official raising concerns through internal channels. It doesn’t prove?—”
“Stop.”
The word comes out harsher than I mean it to.
I take a deep breath. “Don’t give me the speech again, Sting. I heard it yesterday. I heard every word. You were thorough and logical and you delivered the whole thing while I was holding my dead father’s handwriting in my hands.”
Sting’s expression doesn’t change, no big surprise there. The more emotional I get, the stiller he goes, and the stillness makes me want to scream because it feels like I’m beating my head against a wall.
“I’m not asking you to believe me, Sting, or agree with me,” I say. “I’m asking you to consider the possibility that you might be wrong. One teeny, tiny possibility. That’s all. Can you do that? For me? Can you hold one single doubt in that airtight brain of yours for five fucking minutes?”
Surprise crosses his face, which is more than I thought he’d give me. “Doubt without evidence isn’t useful.”
Ugh. Just like him.
I take a deep breath to try to keep my shit together. “Evidence is exactly what I’m trying to get. That’s what I’m asking for your help with. More evidence. And you won’t even?—”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
That stops me. Not the words themselves, how he says them, plain and unguarded, dropped between us without the usual armor.
I stare at him and he holds my attention with something I haven’t seen before, or haven’t let myself see. It’s exhaustion. He knows that every attempt to stop me will just make me walk faster.
And just like that, my anger changes.
It doesn’t disappear, it deflates, the fight seeping out of me in one long, second. What’s left is the thing I’ve been trying to run away from since I sat on my bed last night and cried my eyes out. It’s grief, big, fat, ugly grief. It’s grief so enormous and unmanageable it steals my breath.
I shove Sting, surprising us both, my hands flat against his chest. I need him to move out of my fucking way, and to stop being so still and controlled when I’m falling apart.
He doesn’t budge. Of course.
His hands come up and close around my wrists. Not tight. Not restraining. Just… holding. Stopping the motion and keeping me in my place.
I look up at him and his face is close, closer than I realized. And the expression I find there isn’t the clinical assessment I expected, nor the measured neutrality he wears when he’s managing the world around him.
I see pain, actual pain in his expression. It’s controlled, held behind his eyes with the same discipline he applies to everything, but it’s there.
Damn.
He’s not indifferent. He never was. He’s been holding his own reaction with the same white-knuckle grip I’ve been holding mine.
“I read them last night,” I whisper. “My dad’s handwriting, his notes. It was him, Sting, I could feel him. I?—”
My voice breaks, it actually genuinely breaks.
His hands release my wrists and his arms go around me, pulling me against his chest. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t tell me it’s okay. He doesn’t make promises about the evidence or my father or any of the things he can’t guarantee. He just holds me, one hand on the back of my head, fingers in my hair.
Standing there with my face pressed into his shoulder and his arms around me, I understand something I’ve been refusing to see.
His skepticism isn’t cruelty, I get that. He’d rather I hate him for being honest than trust him while lying. That’s the most Sting thing in the world and it’s exasperating. It’s also exactly the sort of care I know I need.
18
VI
We staythat way for a while.
His hand is in my hair and mine are fisted in his shirt, my breathing gone from ragged to steady against his shoulder. My tears never fully materialized. They stalled somewhere, leaving me with a strange calm.
