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‘I like to fight the fight and I love to win, but it occurred to me after talking to Dash that there are much better wars to wage.’
‘Such as?’ I’m almost afraid to ask.
‘Well, there’s a council in the south for a start. They’ve been overcharging Council Tax, particularly in migrant communities where English is spoken as a second language, and very poorly at that. It’s systemic abuse.’
‘You’re going to go after them?’
He nods. ‘And Pirion Financial Services. Have you heard of them?’
I can only nod.
‘It’s one of the largest pension funds in the UK and it has a habit of over-billing recipients, who are often too infirm to spend hours and hours on calls to sort it out.’
He wraps his arms around my back, pulling me towards him. ‘And Gristinton Academy, who refused entry to fifty per cent more girls than it did boys, and to every applicant with an autism spectrum disorder.’
He drops his forehead to mine and I breathe him in, my heart so full.
‘You’re going to use your powers for good,’ I say, everything inside me locking into place. I’m exactly where I need to be—and wit
h the person I want to share everything with.
‘I’m going to use my powers for good,’ he confirms. ‘And all because of you.’
My heart turns over. ‘Don’t say that. You were on this path. You knew you weren’t happy with the cases you were defending.’
‘But you were the one who made me see it. I didn’t have the courage to admit that, until you forced me to.’
He presses a kiss to the corner of my mouth and I smile.
‘I didn’t have the courage to realise that loving someone is about staying and fighting, not leaving.’ The pad of his thumb brushes across my cheek. ‘I will never leave you again.’
‘After this six months, you mean?’ I tease.
He laughs. ‘I’ll be back often enough that you won’t have time to miss me.’ And he kisses me, finally. A kiss that is familiar and not, a kiss that is full of our future and our past. A kiss that is uniquely us.
* * *
He takes five months.
And he was right. In those five months, I’ve made myself at home at the CPS. I’m doing my traineeship, but my degree feels like a thousand light-years ago. So too does the fact Connor Hughes was once my professor.
We talk on the phone every night. I fall asleep with him at my ear, and his stories run through my brain.
He flies to London every weekend.
I fly up there when I can.
And the five months speed by so much faster than I could ever have imagined.
* * *
My dream has always been to work for the CPS. And now I have that dream, and new ones are filling my mind.
All of them include Connor.
It takes me two years to finish my traineeship and he’s right there with me, establishing himself as a defender of the innocent, overwriting the reputation he’d earned. It’s still there. If you Google him, you see his link to Donovan. But you also see the money he’s won for victims of systemic abuse, for victims too weak to defend themselves. And that’s Connor’s legacy. He isn’t wholly good—but who is? The important thing is, he faced a crossroads in his life and he chose to take this path. He chose to do right. He chose to be the best version of himself.
And he says that was all for me, but I know differently. He would always have made this choice. It just might have taken him a little longer.
