AllFreeNovel
Share Us
For now.
1
Alexa pulled into the driveway and cut the engine on her car, then stared at the house, trying to summon the energy to go inside for brunch with her parents.
A year ago, she hadn’t known anything about Leland Walker other than what she’d seen on TV: another rich guy running for office with nothing to offer the great people of Massachusetts but money and charisma. The Senatorial race had been a professional curiosity more than anything else. At the AG’s office, everything that happened in government felt distantly material, like hearing the first cousin you’d only met once was getting married.
Then Nick Murphy had picked her up off the icy pavement in Copley Square. She had met him once before, when word first leaked that Murphy Intelligenceand Security was not a law-abiding firm but a front for what amounted to a high-end vigilante operation.
She’d gone to their offices to check out the company, and if she was honest with herself, to throw them a little bit, set them off their game. Then, Nick had just been one of three imposing, muscular men who weren’t happy to see her. How could she have known he would reappear when she least expected it? That he would get under her skin and break down every barrier she’d erected to protect herself in the years after the car accident that had changed her life?
The curtain in her parents’ living room fluttered. Alexa’s Mom was probably wondering what she was doing sitting in the car, especially now that she didn’t have a job. It’s not like she could claim a conference call or work emergency.
Things had been tricky with her parents since she’d left the AG’s office, not just because she’d left the job she’d worked so hard to get but because of the way it happened. Because her relationship with Nick — who had been a subject of interest in the months leading up to the announcement of a formal inquiry into MIS — had been improper by every legal standard.
Even now, she couldn’t defend it. Falling in love wasn’t a defense for breaking her oath of office, and she had no excuse but that one. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t divulged anything proprietary to Nick. She’d broken the rules and she’d paid with her job, and quite possibly her career.
The porch light came on even though it was one in the afternoon. She sighed and opened the car door. She was more morose than usual, probably because Leland Walker was being sworn in today. It was still surreal to realize he was a senator, that the man who’d killed Samantha, who had left Alexa for dead and had hurt countless people since then, now occupied a seat in the halls of the United States Senate.
It felt wrong, a discordant note in the symphony of justice to which she’d pledged her life.
Reaching into the passenger seat, she picked up the flourless cake she’d brought for brunch — her mom’s favorite — and grabbed her bag. There was no point dwelling on things she couldn’t change. She wanted to believe they would still find a way to make Leland answer for his crimes, but in the meantime, there was nothing she could do about the fact that he’d won the election.
She made her way slowly up the walk, bracingherself for a tense two hours with her parents. It made her sad to think about how much things had changed. Before Nick, she’d loved coming to her parents’ house for brunch every Sunday, had texted her mom throughout every day and considered both her parents her best friends.
But they didn’t approve of Nick. Not really. They said they supported her no matter what, but she saw the way their expressions tightened when she mentioned him, saw the disapproval in their eyes even if they tiptoed around saying it.
Objectively, she couldn’t blame them. She knew how it looked — their overachieving daughter, an Assistant Attorney General, the subject of an internal investigation because of an improper relationship with a man who was himself under investigation for potential crimes.
It wasn’t a good look. For either of them.
There was no way to impart Nick’s true nature to them. His tenderness and fierce protectiveness over her. His unconditional love for every part of her, scars included. How he hadn’t flinched when she’d told him she could never have children because of injuries sustained in the car accident, the way he’d tossed aside his dreams of a family without a second’s hesitation.
Those were only some of the many reasons she loved him, but her parents wouldn’t understand. Then again, isn’t that what everyone said when they dated a bad guy?
If only you knew him like I do…
She’d become one ofthosewomen, on paper anyway. It wasn’t fair. She knew — sheknew— Nick was good, that he did what he did to serve a higher cause. But she also knew most people wouldn’t believe it.
She opened the front door and was greeted with the smell of onions and garlic, tomato sauce and warm bread.
“Hey!” she called out, forcing cheerfulness into her voice. “It’s me!”
Her mom appeared from the living room, giving credence to Alexa’s hunch that she’d been watching from the window. “There you are!” She came toward Alexa and gave her a hug. “How are you?”
“I’m good.” Alexa held out the cake. “For you.”
“Ah! Thank you,” her mom said, adjusting the colorful scarf that held back her shoulder length hair, brown threaded with gray. “I need this. This weather is so gloomy.”
“What does chocolate cake have to do with the weather?” Alexa asked.
Her mom looked surprised by the question. “In the dead of winter when we only get eight hours of daylight? Everything. You’re at the gym every day. We mere mortals have to get our serotonin somewhere.”
Alexa laughed. “Fair enough.”
Her punishing exercise regimen had been borne out of necessity in the years when she’d been recovering from the car accident. By the time she was healed — as healed as she would ever be — she didn’t dare give it up. Her health still felt tenuous, like a gift she had to keep saying thank you for in case someone decided to snatch it away.
She’d kept up her morning workouts after moving into the Murphy house even though she’d had to let her trainer go when she lost her steady paycheck. She knew Nick would pay if she asked, but she would never ask, would never accept that kind of help from him.
