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“Listen,” Cara says, her face serious. “I know my little brother. I know he’s difficult and grumpy and a pain in the ass. But underneath, it’s because he thinks he’s not worth it.” She pauses. “But you and I both know he is, don’t we?” she finishes quietly.
Jess nods again, not trusting herself to speak.
Cara pats her on the hand. “Get some rest. But go and see him, please? Burrell Ward, room six.”
The detective leaves Jess alone. In the empty room, Jess starts to cry. All her life, all she’d ever felt was damaged goods. Broken, not good enough.
Griffin understood. He understood because he felt the same. He acted like a bad guy, all fists and scowls. But he wasn’t. He’d loved his wife, he loved Cara, his niece and nephew. Perhaps he loved her too.
She wipes her tears away with her sleeve and sits up. She feels her stitches strain slightly; she feels the grate of the bones against each other in the cast. She should wait, ask for a wheelchair, but she knows if she hesitates, she’ll back out.
She pulls the drip out from the IV in her hand, then heaves herself up, reaching for her dressing gown and the pair of crutches, left for the time when she’d be allowed to use them. But she’s an old pro, and soon she’s skidding along the corridor at speed, checking signs, looking for directions to his ward.
Her bare feet are cold on the tiled floor; she gets looks from nurses as she passes, but they let her go.
At last she sees the right signs and pauses. The door to the room is open, and she can see Griffin, propped up in the bed. His eyes are closed, and for a moment she watches him.
He seems all wrong, this brave, fearless man under a pale blue blanket, monitors beeping at his side.
She thinks about her plans to leave, but she can’t.
He opens his eyes and turns to the doorway. He sees her and smiles.
I can’t leave you, she thinks.
“Hi,” he says, and she goes into the room.
Tell me to stay, she thinks, and I will.
CHAPTER
83
“YOU LOOK LIKE shit,” she says.
“So do you.” But Griffin can’t stop himself from smiling. She’s wearing blue and white striped pajamas, one leg bunched over the top of a white cast, a navy dressing gown over the top. She’s the one person—the only person—he’s been desperate to see.
She sits down next to the bed.
“How are you feeling?” she asks.
“Everything hurts. I need a cigarette, but they won’t let me.”
“You should give up. Those things will kill you, you know.”
He laughs, then flinches at the pain it causes. “Perhaps. How are you?”
She shrugs. “I’ll mend.”
“Jess,” he says. “That night when I went out, I …” He stops. But he has to tell her. “I went to buy drugs. Illegally. To get something to help with the pain. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you—”
Jess interrupts him. “I know. It doesn’t matter now. How did it go with Cara?” she asks.
“Hmm,” is all he can say in reply.
When he woke, his sister was by his bedside. He’d been sedated, groggy, and at first it had taken him a while to remember. But then he had. Lauren, dead and hung from the tree. Noah Deakin, the gun in his hand. His sister’s partner. The person Cara had spent practically every fucking minute with, the person who he’d often quietly wondered about, whether there was more to their relationship than just being colleagues. He had been the killer. His wife’s killer.
Cara had looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. “Oh, Nate,” she’d said, then started to cry. “I didn’t know, I didn’t know …”
