It had been abstract, and she suddenly wished she could go back to her younger self and explain how very complicated it all was, how unclear, how terrifying.
Her heart rejected the possibility that Nick was evil. He’d been right about one thing: he knew her, and she knew him too. Maybe he and his brothers were doing the math nobody else wanted to do, writing down the answers no one else wanted to face. She could disagree with them, but she couldn’t fault them for it.
And the truth was, she didn’t disagree. Not really. Not framed as one of those ethics questions from college.
Which meant she had no business being a prosecutor for the AG’s office. Not until she clarified her position, because almost every day she cut deals to keep people on the street who would commit more crimes. Every day she watched judges and juries set guilty people free because of a technicality.
She watched the ducks make their way across the pond, still in search of food. She envied them their simple task. From where she was sitting, there were too many questions and not enough answers.
She thought about what she knew, tried to distill the problem down to the simplest of things.
She knew Leland Walker had killed Samantha and walked away. His father wouldn't be terrorizing Alexa if that wasn’t true.
She knew Leland had committed other crimes, and according to Karen LaGarde and Allen Clatcher, some fairly recently.
Leland hadn’t paid for any of those crimes because his father always cleaned up the mess, which allowed Leland to hurt more people.
Leland was going to win a seat in the United States Senate, where he would be even more powerful than he was now.
Nick and his brothers had the power to stop him.
And lastly: she was in love with Nick Murphy, and just as important, she trusted him. Maybe it was irrelevant to the moral issue at hand, but it was as much a fact as everything else.
She sighed, all the fight leaving her body with the realization. There it was: she trusted him — to do the most right thing, to be honest about his motives.
She’d been fighting on one side for a long time. She’d served her state, had served the justice system to the best of her ability, but her perspective was compromised by her history. Maybe it was time to take a step back, to put herself first for once. Didn’t she deserve that after all these years?
I love every part of you. Nothing will change that. But you have to love me too. You have to love the broken parts of me and the parts you disagree with and the parts you don’t understand. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Nick was right. He’d been there even when she’d lashed out to keep him away, even when she’d told him every terrifying truth. He hadn’t looked away, hadn’t wavered in his love for her.
Could she say the same?
The question hit her like a punch to the stomach. She bent over at the waist, trying to catch her breath around the pain in her chest. The ducks were headed back her way as she hurried back down the pathway.
19
He was in the shower when he heard the knock at the door. He hesitated, wondering if it was housekeeping, then hurried to rinse off his hair when the knock became more insistent.
He turned off the water and wrapped one of the hotel towels around his waist on the way to the door.
“Jesus christ,” he muttered. Ronan had always been a control freak, but Nick had assumed the need to get back to the hospital would take precedent over beating the dead horse of the situation with Alexa. He opened the door. “Listen, I don’t know what you want me to…”
Alexa stood in the hall, her face pale and drawn, eyes brimming with fear.
“Lex… are you okay?”
She nodded, then sighed and shook her head. “No.”
“What’s going on?” He stepped past her, oblivious to the fact that he was only wearing a towel, and peered down the hall, wondering if someone had been following her. When he didn’t see anybody he pulled her into the room with him and shut the door behind them. “What happened?”
She looked up at him and his heart clenched in his chest. Even now, standing in jeans and a sweatshirt half zipped over a tank top, her face free of makeup, she was so damn beautiful.
“What happened is I fell in love with you.” She shook her head. “And then when it mattered, when it counted most, I fucked it all up.”
“You didn’t fuck anything up,” he said.
“I did,” she said. “I don’t have the answer to this mess, Nick, but I know I love you. And I know I’m not even close to okay without you. I should have believed in you the way you’ve believed in me, should have trusted you the way you’ve trusted me. Can you forgive me?”