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And I had to fight to be let in in the first place.
“I’ve maimed men and had no problem washing their blood off my hands,” she tosses at me.
“Don’t admit that in front of the mayor, Minnnka.”
I switch the car off and unsnap my belt, but before I climb out, I lean into her space and press a careful kiss to her cheek. She’s in pain, so jolting her while she has such firm grip on rigidity would be cruel. “You’re gonna be okay. Being here isn’t the end of the world.”
“I don’t understand him.” Desperate, she brings emotional eyes around to stop on mine. “He’s just a man I never knew before coming to Copeland. He’s twice my age, married twice, had a couple of kids, and now he has a couple of grandkids. He works in law and politics, and I, with the dead. He likes speaking publicly, and I…”
“Hardly like speaking at all?”
“Yes!” She presses a thumb to her eye and groans. “For reasons I’ll never understand, he walked into my life and decided he’d like to set me on a shelf. Something pretty to look at. Someone to control. But he does it in such a way as to almost convince me he cares about me.”
“Have you considered that he… actually does?” I buzz a kiss to her temple. It’s both comfort for her, and a way for me to feel her. To check her temperature. To get an understanding of where, on a scale of one to complete mental meltdown, she stands before we head inside.
“People are allowed to care about people, Minka. For no reason at all. There doesn’t have to be an exchange of assets, or favors given. Money doesn’t have to change hands, and status doesn’t have to play into it. Sometimes, humans simply like other humans, and in that moment of caring, they decide they want that person to be safe and healthy and happy.”
“Like me and you?” She sits back just far enough to study my eyes. “Like how we were strangers, and now—”
“Now we’d kill for each other?” I conclude. “Yes. Exactly like that. You’re bugging out of your skin with anxiety because he gives a shit about you and you’re wonderingwhy. But… you care about him, too. You’re declaring innocence for a man who appears guilty as fuck. Why do you think that is?”
She lifts her good shoulder in an instant shrug that leaves me smiling. “I don’t know. Because I care.”
“With no money exchanged,” I repeat. “No favors. No status. You care, purely because you care. So why is it so hard to accept that he feels the same way?”
“Because I’m not very nice to him!” Exasperated, she turns away from me and shoves her door open.
It could almost be a dismissal, but when I climb out on my side, she strides my way and slips beneath my arm.
We’re on private property, where the only witness is a man running from a murder charge. I guess she figures it’s a decent place to show her vulnerable side.
For a minute, anyway.
“I’m such a bitch to him,” she admits quietly. “I never do as he asks. I speak to him with none of the respect everyone else gives him. I have never, since the moment we met, called him ‘Mr. Mayor,’ or Honorable, or whatever I’m supposed to call him. Nothing. He has so many other friends to choose from.”
“And yet, he wants you around.” I lead her up the stairs and carry a little more of her weight than I might in other circumstances. “You’re the same age as his daughters. Maybe you have the same personality.”
“You mean blatantly defiant and disrespectful?”
I choke out a laugh, only to silence the sound when the huge front door slides open to reveal a powerful man… in jeans. Socks, but no shoes. A shirt, without a tie or jacket.
“Holy shit,” I breathe. “It’s like seeing your schoolteacher in public. Naked.”
“Stop it.” Minka digs her elbow into my side and makes a move to step out from beneath my arm, but I hold her tight and absorb the growl she lets out.
“Justin Lawrence.” I stop at the top of the stairs and extend my hand. Since it’s what guys do. “I’d be within my rights to cuff you right now and bring you down to the station.”
He shakes my hand and scoffs. “But you won’t.” Bringing his focus to Minka, he narrows his eyes and looks closer. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing—”
“She’s in pain,” I volunteer before she can avoid any scrap of attention. “We were ambushed by the media outside the George Stanley. Miranda London grabbed her arm before we could escape.”
Lawrence’s entire body hardens, easily felt in the brief second I still have his hand before he pulls it away. But then he turns on his heels and holds the door open. So I lead Minka in, and scan Lawrence’s ornate home.
Massive stone tiles stretch from here to the other side of the house. A staircase winds upward, and art is hung on the walls: family portraits, and hand-drawn children’s creations. Not by his granddaughter, I don’t think. She’s still too young. More likely from his daughters when they were young. Their handprints, and watercolor paintings.
Happiness exudes inside a home not too dissimilar from my father’s mansion in New York. But where misery and darkness thrive on the East Coast, warmth and love dance from picture frame to picture frame in this home.
