Chapter sixteen
Jenna
He didn’t move when I closed the space between us, not even when I pulled out the battered chair across from him and sat, hands folded so tight in my lap it cut the blood off at the knuckles. The safe house air was as stale as old cigs, and colder than I remembered. I tugged my blazer closer.
Seneca watched me with cop eyes, not lover’s eyes. Jaw locked, shadow in the sockets. I could count each pulse beat in his temple. His hand drummed the side of the Formica, the other tucked into the crook of his arm like it might go for his sidearm at any second.
I opened with the truth because it’s always the only move that works on men like him. “I used her,” I said. The words made the air vibrate.
He didn’t blink. “You used everyone,” he said, voice flat as the surface of the table.
“I cultivated that relationship. Played her taste in whiskey, played her taste in jazz, even figured out her dumb allergy to shellfish and used it to get her to meet at my favorite place for lunch.” I looked at my hands, twisting the hem of my blouse. “Imade her trust me. Because it made me better at my job. And at first, that was all.”
Seneca’s fingers kept tapping, but slower. “You’re proud of that?”
“No,” I said. “I’m proud of winning. I’m not proud of the next part.” I forced myself to meet his eyes. “I didn’t mean to fall in love with her.”
He didn’t recoil, didn’t even exhale. Just a slow, reptilian blink.
“I’m not some tragic lesbian,” I went on. “I’ve had men. I even liked a few. But her, well, she was like a wall I wanted to break. The more she pushed back, the more I—” I could feel the mask start to slip. “It stopped being a game. And she knew. She always knew. But she let me get close anyway, even after I was supposed to be the enemy.”
He leaned forward, elbows digging into the table’s edge. “So why betray her?”
I let the silence have a minute. I thought about lying, then remembered what happened the last time I lied to a man with a gun.
“Because I saw you,” I said. “The night after the hearing. She let you in, and when she walked you out, her whole body was different. I’d never seen her let go around anyone. Not once. And I was jealous.” I ground the heel of my palm into my thigh, hoping the pain would steady my voice. “Not just of her. Of you, too. I wanted it to be me who made her that way.”
He grunted, not quite a laugh. “Could’ve tried harder.”
“Don’t,” I snapped, sharper than intended. I pressed my nails into my thigh to bleed it out. “You ever want something so bad it makes you stupid? That’s what I was with her. When I got the call, Martini, the Bellini old man, all of it, I saw a way to hurt her and win at the same time. But I didn’t factor you in.” I hesitated,and the words came out softer than I wanted. “I didn’t factor in how much I’d want you, too.”
He finally stopped tapping. The room ticked with the sound of the fridge cycling. “You’re saying you sold her out because you wanted her. And me.”
“Don’t say it like that,” I said, because I couldn’t stand the simplicity of it. “It wasn’t about sex. It was about...being seen.” I swallowed, forcing the next part up like a swallowed razor. “You ever have anyone see you, Seneca? The way you really are? Not the soldier, not the outlaw, not the broken thing on the slab.”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
I exhaled, then reached for the glass of tap water, my hand shaking just enough to spill it down my sleeve. I dabbed it with a napkin, glad for the excuse to not look at him for a second.
“The thing with Catherine,” I said, “it was real. Even when I was lying, it was real. I just...didn’t know how to want something without wrecking it. My whole life, I’ve been two steps from losing everything. So when she let me in, I had to break it before it could break me.”
Seneca’s eyes were shark black. “That’s not how she sees it.”
I shrugged, because what else was left? “She’s a Bellini. She’s got a code. Even if she never forgives me, she’ll understand it, eventually.”
He braced his hands on the table, as if steadying for recoil. “You came here to confess, or to ask for forgiveness?”
I laughed, the ugly kind. “Forgiveness isn’t in the cards. I just wanted you to know I didn’t do it for money. Not the way they think.”
He nodded, slow, like he was winding up to make a decision that would cost him. “So what do you want, then?”
I dropped the napkin and stared at the water stain on my sleeve. “I want you to look at me the way you looked at her. Likeyou could kill me or save me, and you haven’t made up your mind which.”
He leaned back, cracking his knuckles, face unreadable. For a second, I thought he might come across the table and break me open, then and there. Instead, he just looked, really looked, at all the cracks I’d spent years spackling over.
He said, “You’re a goddamn mess, Smart.”
“Yeah,” I said, and it sounded like a compliment.
