“Faith—”
“No, Nick. Promise me.”
“I’m not going to make that promise, because it would be a lie.”
“I just want to make this go away.” She grabs my arm and covers my tattoo with her hand. “Revenge: An eye for an eye. That’s you. Not me.” She lets go of my arm. “I’m going to start packing.” She heads out of the kitchen and I don’t immediately follow.
I text Beck:Bill Winter is trying to get into Faith’s good graces. He’s behind all of this.
Beck:Agreed. I’m working on it.
I inhale and press my hands to the counter, the word murder in my head again. Bill might be trying to get into Faith’s good graces now, but as Abel has always said, once a killer, always a killer. Only I’m not my father. I won’t just cause pain. I’ll draw blood and I’ll make sure it’s first blood.
And I’ll do it for Faith.
I push off the counter and seek her out, her frustrated groan drawing me toward the front of the house. I find her in the foyer trying to put together one of the boxes we picked up earlier, frustration in her face before she tosses it. “I can’t get the stupid thing together. I’ve been living alone and doing just fine, but now, I cannot get that box together.”
I walk to her and ignore the box, pulling her to me. “Inferring that I’ve made you weaker?”
“No. No, that’s not it. I’m sorry.” Her hand goes to my chest. “If anything, your badass-ness has brought out my own.”
“The eye for an eye revenge thing is a trigger for you. I know that. But he broke laws if he did what we think he did. And if he will go after his own niece, think what he’ll do to others. He deserves to pay.”
“You’re right. But that means justice, not revenge. To me, they’re defined with different intent.”
“You’re right. They are. And I might be brutal, sweetheart, but the law is my bitch, and so are your enemies.”
“I know that. I’m not really upset at you, Nick. I wasn’t even reacting to you. I’m upset to realize my father was someone I didn’t know him to be.”
“His sex life doesn’t change who he was as a man, Faith.”
“A little kinky sex doesn’t. I, of all people, know that.”
“Then what’s bothering you?”
“He played the victim and that feels like a lie. It’s like I didn’t really know who he was and that is such a deep betrayal. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Not before we meet with Kasey. Can you just please help me with the stupid box?”
“Of course.” I kiss her temple, my lips lingering there, because damn it, it’s like she was talking about me. And it feels like she has that kitchen knife in her hand again and she just plunged it in my chest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Faith
I don’t like who you are here…
Nick’s words play in my head the entire afternoon as we box up my belongings for the move to San Francisco. Namely because there isn’t much to do or that I want to take with me, most certainly not how I act and feel here. All I want are my clothes and shoes, and basic items I use every day. Nick notices too.
“You know,” he says, about an hour into packing my bedroom, “you can take anything you want. You can takeeverythingif you want.”
“I’m taking what matters,” I assure him, holding up a pair of pink panties. “See?”
I successfully distract him and we move on to the living area and make the rounds from there. The entire time, he builds the boxes and tries to overstuff them, and I pull things back out. Time gets away from us and it’s nearly sunset and time to get ready for dinner when it hits me that I haven’t packed a box of random items like gloves and scarves I keep in the closet. Afraid I’ll forget again, I rush to the bedroom and the closet. Grabbing a decorative wooden container where I have various accessories stored, I stick it in an empty box in the center of the small room.
I rotate to leave and find Nick leaning in the archway, his hair half around his face, and half tied at his nape. His blue eyes are stark. “Are you having second thoughts?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“You aren’t taking anything with you, Faith. It’s as if you aren’t committed to leaving or rather, staying with me.” There is a hint of vulnerability in his voice, his eyes, that Nick Rogers doesn’t allow anyone to see. But he does let me now. He lets me see that I could hurt him the way he could hurt me.