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“What do you want to happen?”
She shifted in his arms and he glanced down to find her looking up at him, her chin resting on his chest. “I want to be with you.”
The trauma of what had happened at her apartment would stay with her a long time, maybe forever, but her eyes were clear, her expression resolute.
“I want to be with you too,” he said.
The ghost of a smile touched her lips and she lay her head back down. “Good.”
He held her tighter. He didn’t know what would happen in the future, but did anyone? Maybe she would find out the truth about him. Maybe she would learn to hate him for what he was. Maybe she would never forgive him for compromising her position at the AG’s office by not calling the police about the man at her apartment.
He would deal with it when the time came, would deal with all of it a thousand times over for even a chance to make her his. He would trust that there was a reason they’d been brought together, that there was a reason for all the shitty things that had propelled them to this moment when she was safe in his arms.
For once in his life, he would trust in something good.
She scooted up to kiss him, her tongue moving slowly against his before she pulled away to look in his eyes.
“Thank you,” she said.
He took her face in his hands. “No, thank you.”
He may have saved her life, but she’d saved his too. She’d brought him back from an existence that had been empty and soulless, had shown him what it meant to be alive, to want something enough to be afraid of losing it, to feel something powerful enough that you were willing to hurt for it.
He may not have known what the future held for them, for their relationship, but he knew this: he would risk everything to protect her.
Epilogue
Alexa’s eyes were focused on her computer, but her mind was elsewhere, the noise of the office a comforting backdrop to her thoughts. It had been a week since the attack in her apartment and she’d spent most of it buried in work, trying to forget the look in the man’s eyes as he’d tried to choke the life out of her, the blood that had coated Nick’s hands, the feeling she’d had when she realized the man was dead.
Not horror. Not even simple relief.
Satisfaction.
She hadn’t agreed to let Nick clean it up because she’d been in shock: she’d done it because she’d wanted the man out of her apartment, had wanted to pretend it had ever happened.
Most of all, she’d wanted to protect Nick from the police.
She’d spent most of her adult life learning about and upholding the law, and when it had counted, when she’d had a chance to let the system do what it was meant to do, she’d allowed Nick to handle it instead.
What did that say about her? About him?
She’d searched for the answers and came up empty. She knew only that she wanted him. It was too soon for forever. She wasn’t a princess in a fairy tale: she was a real woman, someone with enough sense to realize it took time to really know someone, to let them know you.
But the fact that she wanted to be with him was irrefutable. It was a truth that coexisted with the knowledge that she didn’t really know him, that she would never know if they could make it work, if there was a future for them, until she knew the truth about MIS.
Leland Walker had announced his bid for the Senate two days after his father, Frederick, had sent someone to kill her. Alexa had been staying at the hotel ever since, her life in limbo while she processed what Nick had told her about his conversation with Karen LaGarde.
She couldn’t stay there forever. At some point, she’d have to go back to her apartment or find another place to live. She’d have to figure out how to go on with her life while the man who’d left her for dead became a Senator for the state of Massachusetts.
Or she’d have to figure out what to do about it if she couldn’t.
“Morning,” Imani said, poking her head in Alexa’s office.
Alexa smiled. “Morning.”
She’d thought she’d be a nervous wreck coming back to work. Surely everyone would see the truth on her face — that she’d almost died, that she’d watched someone else take their last breath, that she’d let Nick dispose of the body without a single call to the police.
But she’d been surprisingly calm, her rational mind stepping in to remind her why she’d done what she had to do, why it would have been wrong to bring more scrutiny down on Nick when he hadn’t done anything but save her life.
