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She flips on the lights, and I blink up at her.
“Are you okay?” She comes over to the table and puts one gloved hand on my shoulder. She’s wearing tight black jeans and a scarred leather jacket. Her blond hair is as bright as a gold coin.
I shake my head.
Then I tell her everything—about Patton, about Maura, about wanting to be good and falling short, about following her that day when I chased down Gage without knowing why, about Yulikova and the gun. Everything.
By the time I’m done, she’s sitting backward in one of the chairs, resting her chin on her arms. She has shouldered off the jacket.
“How mad at me are you?” I ask. “I mean, exactly how mad—like on a scale of one to ten, where one is kicking my ass and ten is a shark tank?”
She shakes her head at my scale. “You mean because you watched me put out a contract on someone and then watched Gage kill him? That you’re cooperating with the law, maybe even working for them? That you never told me any of this? I’m not happy. Does it bother you—what you saw me do?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“You think I have ice in my blood?” She asks it lightly, but I know the answer matters.
I wonder what it would be like, being raised to be a crime lord. “You are what you always were going to be.”
“Remember when we were kids?” she says. There’s a slight smile on her mouth, but the way she’s looking at me doesn’t quite match up. “You thought I would be the one making deals and enemies, backstabbing and lying. You said you were going to get out, travel the world. Not get swept up in the life.”
“Shows what I know.”
“That’s one long game you’ve been playing, Cassel. One long, dangerous game.”
“I didn’t mean for everything to get so crazy. It was one thing after another. I had to fix things. Someone had to fix things for Maura, and I was the only one who knew, so there just wasn’t anyone else. And I had to keep Barron from going to the Brennans. And I had to stop myself—” I do stop myself there, because I can’t say the rest. I can’t explain how I needed to stop myself from being with her. I can’t explain how I nearly didn’t manage it.
“Okay, well, quit.” She makes a wild gesture with her hands, as though stating something so obvious that it shouldn’t have to be said. “You did what you thought you had to do, but you still have a way out, so take it. Get away from the Feds. And if they don’t want to let you off easy, then go into hiding. I’ll help. I’ll talk to my dad. I’ll try to see if he can take some of the pressure off the thing with your mother, at least until you can solve this. Don’t let them play you.”
“I can’t quit.” I look away, at the peeling wallpaper above the sink. “I can’t. It’s too important.”
“What makes you so eager to throw away your life on whatever cause comes along?”
“That’s not true. That’s not what I was doing—”
“None of it is your fault. What is it that you feel so damn guilty about that makes you act like you don’t matter?” Her voice rises, and she rises with it, coming around the table to push against my shoulder. “What makes you think that you’ve got to solve everyone’s problems, even mine?”
“Nothing.” I shake my head, turning away from her.
“Is it Jimmy Greco and Antanas Kalvis and the rest? Because I knew them, and they were really bad men. The world’s a better place without them in it.”
“Stop trying to make me feel better,” I say. “You know I don’t deserve it.”
“Why don’t you deserve it?” she yells, her voice sounding like the words are being ripped out of her gut. Her hand is on my upper arm; she’s trying to get me to look at her.
I won’t.
“You,” I say, standing. “Because of you.”
For a moment neither of us speaks.
“What I did—,” I start, but I can’t make that sentence go anywhere good. I start over. “I can’t forgive myself—I don’t want to forgive myself.”
I sink down to the linoleum tiles and say what I have never said before. “I killed you. I remember killing you. I killed you.” The words, over and over and over, rolling out of me. My voice is catching. My voice is breaking.
“I’m alive,” Lila says, sliding to her knees so that I have to look at her, have to see her. “I’m right here.”
I take a deep, shuddering breath.
