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Eventually, the sun sinks behind the tall trunks of the pines, and the dappled shade of middle afternoon fades, the countryside embracing the darkness of twilight and the night beyond. The fireplace gives off enough heat to stave off the worst of the autumn cold.
The surfaces of the cabin are all coated with a layer of wooly dust, but neither one of us cares.
We’re safe. For now.
Safe enough.
“Devan.” The sound of her voice cuts through me, and I set down the can of peaches. “It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you about everything. There are things about me I’m worried will change the way you see me.”
“That’s the problem, Aria. You say you want to talk, and then your lips refuse to give up the information. There’s no reason for you to worry about what I’ll think.” I spear through a slice of peach and lift it, syrup dripping from the tines.
“I do worry,” she insists. She pushes her can of green beans away.
“Why? I’m the one who should be worried.” I go for levity and fail. “I’m not a good man.”
“You’re a better man than most.” Dropping her fork, she exhales, looking torn. “Don’t hold your breath for a whole novel at once. It’s really damn hard to say, and I halfway feel like I need to start at the beginning.” She’s staring at the tabletop instead of me and tracing her index finger through the dust, wiping clean mazes of circles.
She looks so tiny right then, her pants ripped from dropping to the ground and her coat spattered with all manner of stains, some blood, and others dirt and detritus from the parking lot. Her frown is nothing but another accessory and deepens the longer I stare at her.
There’s something wrong with me to getthisobsessed over a woman I don’t really know, one who works for, sins with my greatest enemy. Yet a knot inside of me starts to tighten, my breath hitching in my chest as I wait for what she will say. And I wonder if I’ll ever be strong enough to walk away from her again.
I deserve this pain. That’s the only thing I know for certain.
I deserve whatever torment I feel, and I relish it.
“And where is the beginning?” I ask her.
“Too far back to be anything except a fuzzy, horrible dream,” she murmurs. “It almost feels unreal at this point.”
I reach for her the same way she reached for me earlier, right before the shootout. A wrong move toward her, one I’m powerless to stop. And then another when I speak, even when the part of me I used to rely on, the part that makes me a good cop and made me a decent man, screams at me to back the hell up.
“Aria. Tell me.”
Her name is a prayer uttered on my lips for deliverance or death. I’m not sure which one. I only know how my focus narrows until there is only her, and the rest of the world becomes exactly as she said—a fuzzy, horrible dream.
The line between right and wrong…does it matter? Outside of my head, no one else is impacted by the struggle. They’re only worried about the consequences of my decision. And right now, the lines are blurring together. This romance has the potential to end in ruin or take a dark turn, and that’s the better path.
I realize two things there at the kitchen table. Sometimes the only way to help someone else is to destroy myself in the process. And I’ve already started the process to work with and save Aria Darklyn from her personal hell.
SIXTEEN
aria
“The reasonI want you to help me, Devan,” I start, “is because Broderick is branching out.”
“You told me as much.”
I stifle a wave of panic. What if Devan won’t listen to me? “He’s targeting kids on the street and selling them.Human trafficking. I’ve helped him with his money laundering and moving online products, but I can’t let him do this because he knows how much it hurts me. I used to be one of those kids.” There. It’s out in the open.
Devan is staring at me as if I’m worth so much more than I am, and as much as I hate to admit it, I don’t deserve it. I’m nothing but chaos even though I haven’t moved from the chair. At last, his face shifts as my words sink in, and he realizes exactly what I’ve said.
“You know I’m going to have to take you into custody for this,” he begins slowly. “For the part you’ve played in his schemes.”
“I’ve sinned in my life. I admit it. But taking me into custody isn’t going to help the kids that Broderick wants to target.Kids, Devan. He’s already started, and he took great pleasure in telling me about his new plans. Almost as though he did it because he knew it would hurt me.”
How do I make him understand? There are intricacies to life on the street, levels and textures that sometimes have nothing to do with innocence or sin and everything to do with circumstance. I’m the product of my choices, and some of them led me to a very bad place.
“They’ve done nothing to hurt anyone.” My lower lip trembles, and I bite down on it hard enough to draw blood, if only to get the shaking to stop. “They don’t deserve to be carted off and shipped to god knows where to be used for god knows that purpose?” I shake my head. “I refuse to believe it. Do you want to help these kids or not?”
