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Another step.
“I do know you, Dax. You’re a good person. You knew someone needed to stop Julian. But you weren’t really involved in what he did. You were just getting evidence against him. You never smuggled anything, like the cops said.”
“What?” His eyes go round, and I drop the foot I’m about to take another step with back to the floor.
“They asked me loads of questions about New York. About your baggage.”
I pause, searching his face for a clue. I’ve been thinking about it ever since the cops interviewed me. I wondered if there was any truth to it. But then, it just didn’t make any sense. Dax isn’t a criminal. He was trying to take Julian down. The cops know that now. They let him go free without charge. It was just part of their questioning. They were just doing their job.
“They probably thought if you were guilty of something that I would give you up accidentally if they probed deep enough.”
“It’s true.”
“Exactly. It’s how they always play these things. Ask lots of quest—”
“No, Rose. It’s true.”
Now it’s my turn for my eyes to widen as I gape at him. “What is?”
He pauses, his eyes raking over my face and then pinching at the corners as though he’s mentally preparing to deliver the kill shot.
“I did use you. I gave you my bags to take because I thought you were less likely to be searched. I told you to smile at the customs guy because I knew he’d be too busy looking at your beautiful face to even consider you might be carrying something you shouldn’t.”
“No. You…” I snap my head back. “You wouldn’t do that.”
He watches me as sourness settles in the pit of my stomach and the sound of my own heartbeat racing echoes in my ears.
“I used you to get things into the country illegally. You know I’m not lying now. Look at me.” Dax nods slowly as I search his eyes, and I suck in a sharp breath.
He’s telling the truth. I can tell. He was lying before about it all being an act with me. I can tell that from his eyes, even if he won’t admit it. But this? He’s not lying about this.
He lied to me when we went to New York. He used me.
“You said you were going for work, to visit the Andersons in California, and that I should visit my family.”
“Sounds a lot better than telling you I needed to move something out of the country, doesn’t it?”
I stare at him, my brain firing out explanations one after the other, desperately searching for one that will make this all stop.
None make any sense.
Except one.
That it’s the truth.
“You wouldn’t put me in danger like that. If I’d been caught with drugs, then I would have been arrested, I could have gone to jail.”
He flinches, then recovers himself, his face closing down as he holds my eyes.
“You need to let the sun set on any romantic notions you had of us. Because I’m not that man. I never will be. Go back to New York, Rose.” He drops his head and begins to turn away.
“What? Go back and call up Gareth? Tell him I’ll go for dinner with him after all?”
I’m shaking with anger, but I don’t miss the sudden flex of Dax’s jaw as he brings his eyes back to mine.
“Is that what you really want? For me to go back there and be with someone like him? When you’re the only one I want?”
The thick muscles in his neck contract, making the bird tattoo on his neck move in a way that makes it look like it’s waving with its wing.
