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He didn’t say a thing. He just held me tighter, kissed me gently on top of my head, and stroked my hair soothingly.
Truth to tell, it surprised me. I thought I’d spent all my tears on Ali’s death.
Guess there were a few in me I still didn’t know about.
After a couple of minutes, I pulled back and wiped my eyes. “Sorry.”
“For what? Being human?”
I remembered that he didn’t see me as a tough-ass P.I. out here to investigate her cousin’s death. No, he saw me as a waitress in a bar. A regular chick. There wasn’t any need for me to be tough.
But it was such a deep part of my personality, I couldn’t let it go. Not even deep undercover.
“I thought I was tougher than that,” I murmured.
“You should start worrying for your soul when a night like tonight doesn’t shake you up.”
I looked into his gorgeous blue eyes. “Did it shake you up?”
“More than I’d like to admit.”
He gave me a wistful smile, then leaned in for a kiss. Not like last night, full of uncontained passion, but something sweeter… and darker. A kiss that comforted me, yet reminded me how we’d both cheated death.
We stayed like that for almost a full minute, kissing in slow motion, until finally he pulled away.
“Come on,” he said, his voice weary. “Let’s go to sleep.”
19
We got into bed. He wore his boxers and nothing else; I shucked off all my clothes in the bathroom and came out in one of his oversized wifebeaters. It came down to the tops of my thighs but barely stayed on my shoulders.
We lay there in the darkness – him on his back staring up the ceiling, me on my side, staring at him.
“Are you okay?” I whispered after a few minutes of silence.
“No, I’m pretty far from okay,” he said, though his voice was gentle.
“Something really bad happened out there, didn’t it.”
“I can’t tell you that, Fiona. And I need you not to ask about it anymore.”
“Okay.”
He was quiet for another minute, then he said, “Tell me about your cousin.”
Alarms went off in my head and gut. “What?”
“Your cousin, the one you lost… what was her name?”
Oh God, oh God, oh God –
“Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know… you asked me this morning about somebody I lost… and I might have just lost Benjy… maybe even the whole fucking motorcycle club.” He shrugged. “Misery loves company, I guess.”
Time to start cataloguing lies.
“Anna.”
