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“Because… you don’t believe that I do?”
Harte stopped suddenly. For a long, terrible moment, he didn’t speak. But then he took her other hand in his. It was so dark in that part of the tunnel that even with her eyes acclimated to the lack of light, Esta could barely make out the features of his face. But she felt him breathing, steady and slow. Felt the warmth of his hands around hers, sure and steady. “No,” he said. “That isn’t it at all.”
“Then what?” she asked, suddenly uneasy. “You didn’t want her—me—to say it, or…?” She tried to pull away, but he didn’t let her go.
He let out an amused breath, and she felt the warmth flutter across her face. “That’s not it either.” There was a smile in the words that had impatience lashing at her.
“Then what?”
“She only said those words to prove herself to me,” he told her. “But I know you, Esta. You’ve never used what we have between us to prove anything. You’ve never thrown love at me as a weapon.”
She frowned, thinking of how they’d first met. Thinking too of the nights in the theater, when she had tried to seduce him for Dolph’s cause. “I don’t know that we’re remembering things the same way.”
“I’m not saying you didn’t try to tempt me, especially back when we were still at odds,” he said wryly, the humor in his words coming clearly through the darkness. “But I knew all along that it was nothing more than simple misdirection.”
“Not so simple,” she argued. But there was no heat in her words, because he was right. Esta might have tried to lure him in, but she never would have toyed with something as serious as love. Especially not once she really knew him. She might be a thief, but she had grown up feeling unwanted. So had he. She never would have used their connection as a weapon against him.
“You’ve never lied to me about anything that really mattered, especially not when it came to what this is between us.” He lifted her hand to his lips, and she felt the warmth of his mouth brushing her knuckles. “Even then, even though Nibsy raised you to be ruthless and effective, you had far too much integrity for those kinds of games. And now?” He kissed her knuckles again. “You know you don’t need to prove anything to me, especially not about how you feel. We’ve been through too much together. You are not negotiable. We are not negotiable. That’s all there is to it.”
His words warmed her. But suddenly his belief in her—in them—felt like an overwhelming weight. When had anyone given her that sort of trust so blindly?
Never.
And he was wrong. She had lied, and recently, too. It had been such a stupid, seemingly insignificant lie, but now, with his words wrapping around her, it felt like a wound between them. After everything that had just happened? She couldn’t leave it there to fester.
“There’s something I have to tell you.” She bit her lip, feeling embarrassed and stupid and awful all at once. Harte didn’t respond, so she had no choice but to go on. “Back in Chicago…” She paused, not knowing how to start.
“Esta?” he asked when she hesitated long enough that the silence had made it too difficult to start again.
“Back in Chicago, I told you something that wasn’t completely true.” She let out a breath, not knowing why it felt so hard to just say it. “I told you there hadn’t been any”—she used his word for it—“consequences. To what happened on the train.”
Harte didn’t respond immediately, and the silence between them had weight now. There was distance within that silence too. “I don’t understa—”
“I won’t know for a week at least,” she blurted.
Again, the silence. The distance. She couldn’t quite draw breath, and it had nothing to do with the ache in her ribs. The tightness in her chest went deeper than that.
“You lied,” he said—it wasn’t a question. “About that?”
She wished she could see his face. Why had she thought that darkness would make this confession easier? “Only about knowing,” she told him. “I still don’t think anything happened. The timing was wrong, and the chances are so slim, and—” She was doing this all wrong. “I didn’t think you’d let me do what I needed to do if you were worried about… that.”
“You thought I would want to protect the child, if there was one.” He was standing right next to her, but he sounded so far away.
She nodded, then realized he couldn’t see her. “I was worried, but I was wrong. I never should have told you anything until I knew for sure. I don’t want that lie between us. I want what you said just now to be true. I don’t want any more lies between us, especially not about things that matter. And what we have, Harte?” She gave his hands a squeeze. “This? It matters.”
He pulled away from her, leaving her hands cold. She suddenly wasn’t sure what to do with them.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wishing it were enough.
He didn’t speak. In the distance, the tunnels vibrated, and suddenly she wished she had just swallowed the secret. Or maybe the city could just swallow her up.
“As soon as I told you, I regretted lying. I was going to tell you the truth, but then everything went south and—” She stopped. “I just needed you to see me as an equal, and not like some soft, pointless creature you needed to protect. It’s not an excuse. It’s not meant as one. But you deserve an explanation. I knew how dangerous it was going into the convention, and I needed you to know I could do whatever it took. I didn’t want you to stop me.”
“You really think I could have?” he asked. “I know you can do anything.”
“After what happened on the train…” She felt her cheeks warm with the thought of his hands on her skin, the way they fit together. “When we were together, it was more than just physical. It wasn’t something I could laugh off or walk away from, and you bringing up the possibility that it was a mistake?”
“Not a mistake,” he said, brushing his fingers against hers again. “Not ever a mistake.”
