He shook his head, and his shoulders slumped. “A lot. Billings visited today.”
“What?” she asked stupidly, the statement blindsiding her. “Billings…your boss?”
He nodded. “That’s who I was talking to at the field. He had a meeting in Austin and drove out to talk to me.”
Her heart picked up speed, her words tumbling out of her. “You said it was someone from the school.”
His jaw flexed. “I wasn’t ready to talk about it.”
Wasn’t ready to talk about it. As in this was not good news. This was bad news. The bad news. The guillotine that’d been hanging over them from the start. Her hands trembled, and she forced them into the pockets of her jeans. “Talk about what?”
He let out a long breath and looked to the horizon. “They’ve got my next assignment. Looks like I won’t be seeing the end of summer here, much less winter.”
She felt like she was hearing the words through water. Slow and distorted.
“They want me to leave tomorrow night so I can start prepping for it.”
Her stomach plummeted to her toes,
and her knees tried to buckle. “Tomorrow?”
He looked at her, regret in his eyes. “Yeah.”
Her body had needles in it. Needles and glass. But she tried to keep a grip on her reaction, tried to be mature about it. She’d promised. “For how long?”
“Until it’s done,” he said, resigned. “Months. Years. Who fucking knows?”
“Right,” she whispered. Months. Years. “How dangerous?”
“Liv.” There was a begging note in his voice. The message clear. Don’t ask.
She walked on wooden legs to the Adirondack chair and sank onto the arm of it. She needed to breathe. This was what she’d prepared for. Despite her fantasy of turning things around, she’d known it was a long shot. She’d known this was coming. Not this soon. But in a few weeks. This was the other side of the coin she’d bought. Breathe.
He turned and lowered himself to a knee in front of her. “I’m so sorry. This is tearing me up, too. I love you, and I don’t know how to make this better.”
Tears slipped down her cheeks, and she forced a humorless smile. “There is no way to make it better, right? You told me this would happen, and I said I could handle it. Guess I overestimated my abilities.”
He cupped her cheek. “Livvy, please don’t cry.”
She shook her head and her fingers curled into her thighs, her body hot all over, yet cold inside, all this feeling welling in her. Loss edged with panic. “I want to ask you to stay. I want them to find someone else. I don’t want you to be in danger.” She lifted her gaze to his. “Tell them to find someone else, Finn.”
She hated the desperate tone in her voice, but she couldn’t help it. The words were falling out on their own. She was in that closet again, clinging to his shirt. He was leaving. Hurtling into danger.
“Sweetheart,” he said softly, her face in his hands. “I’m so sorry. I was prepared to quit. I’ve been thinking about it for the last few weeks. Just walking away and figuring something else out.”
Hope raised a flag in her, but it was a flag on fire. She could hear it coming. The but. She filled it in for him. “But?”
He let out a ragged breath and lowered his hands. “But this assignment is tied to Long Acre. I shouldn’t be telling you that because it’s classified information, but you have the right to know. This is the case I joined the FBI for, what I’ve been working toward for years. They found the people who got Joseph and Trevor the guns. People who bring illegal weapons in for so many terrible things. I can take them down. Stop them from doing it again.”
All the air left her.
He shook his head, his eyes begging for understanding. “I don’t know how to walk away from that. I want to be here with you, but…I also made a promise to all the people we lost. A promise to myself. It’s what’s gotten me up every morning since I first joined the FBI.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “It’s my fight. I…need to see it through.”
She wagged her head, tears flowing freely now and frustration building. “But why do you have to be the one do to do it? Why can’t someone else be the hero this time?”
The question made him blink. “What?”
Anger welled in her, and she pushed to her feet. “Why does it always have to be you? Are you the only agent in the goddamned FBI? Is it because you think you failed? Is it because you have some hero complex? What is it?”