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“I knew the risks going in,” I told him. “I mean… to an extent. I don’t think I was prepared for how scared I would be all the time. And then how insane I felt at times because I had no idea if I even had reason to be so paranoid and freaked out.”
Lincoln’s hand moved out, closing over mine, pulling me over toward the bed where we both sat down.
“What was his plan?” he prompted again. “To go to the cops about it?”
“Eventually, I guess.”
“You guess? What the fuck else could he do with information like that?”
This was why I didn’t lead with what Rylan was going to school for.
Film.
“Rylan had been keeping track of his father’s decline, of his testing and research…”
“Keeping track how?” Lincoln asked, voice already heavy with skepticism.
“He was filming it. Doing interviews. He even got a few interviews with one of the other people in the company who died. He just… he needed proof that they knew. That they were knowingly allowing a product that was unsafe to hit the market.”
“Christ, Gem,” he said, raking a hand down his face.
“It’s important, Lincoln,” I told him. Even now, even knowing all the risk, all the potential sacrifice.
It was bigger than Rylan and me. It was bigger than his father and the other two people who had tragically died.
This had the potential to rock hundreds of lives, to upset entire family structures.
Someone had to do something.
And I understood my responsibility in that. If everyone just shrugged their shoulders and said ‘someone else will do it,’ then nothing would ever get done. People like this would always get away with it. Others would always suffer.
Sometimes you had to be brave, you had to put that target on your back and walk into the range.
Sometimes little people needed to do big things.
That was how change was made.
“I understand that,” he agreed. “That doesn’t mean I have to like that you needed to be a part of that change. I get why you did it, Gem, I really do. But I hate that you had to feel scared and crazy and get hurt in the process.”
That was fair enough.
I knew that if it was someone I cared about who got involved in something like this, I would hate it too.
“Now, what I am really concerned with at this point was the tail-end of that conversation I just overheard.”
“Which part?” Rylan had been ranting and raving so fast that I had a hard time keeping up. He’d been mad that I had run without solid proof that I was found out, thinking that I was paranoid and had now likely ruined any chance of getting back in there if he needed me to.
“The part about you going back in. Because, let me get something perfectly clear here, you are not going to be doing that. I don’t care if you don’t like it. I don’t care if I have to strap you to this goddamn bed to keep you from doing it. But you are never going anywhere near that place again.”
“I know. I’m not.”
I had just been so overwhelmed by Rylan’s words that I really just hadn’t been thinking straight on the phone with him. Of course, I was not going back in. I knew there was a threat. I had the evidence of it on my face.
“And if he is thinking you going back is even a remote possibility at this point, you might need to consider that he is the one who might actually be losing it.”
“I don’t think he’s losing it. I think he is just desperate and passionate.”
“And that makes him dangerous. Honestly, Gem, I don’t like the idea of you being anywhere near him in the future. And I don’t have a problem telling him that myself. Clearly, I want his information.”
“This isn’t his fault. The attack,” I clarified when he immediately started to contradict me. “He had nothing to do with it.”
“Did he even bother to ask if you were alright, baby?”
God, that word was killing me.
He had always been big on pet names.
Honey, sweetie, sweetheart, darling.
But never baby.
In fact, I wasn’t sure I had ever heard that one from him.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been so into it, either. A girl from one of the marches I had attended had gone off on a rant about how men infantilizing grown women was creepy and condescending.
But, well, there was simply nothing creepy or condescending about it when Lincoln said it. In fact, it was maybe the sexiest thing I had ever heard.
It was making it hard to focus on the conversation.
What had he asked me again?
Oh, right.
If Rylan even cared that I was hurt.
It maybe killed me a bit to admit the truth.
“No, he didn’t.”
“I don’t like that look in your eye, Gem, but I think you always try to see the best in people. It’s sweet. And noble. But it isn’t always smart. And sometimes… people just don’t have that much good in them.”
