Page 110 of When He Defends
Her father’s schizophrenia had been faked. He’d been tricked. Manipulated. Murdered. And all in the name of love.
Love wasn’t supposed to make you into a monster. It wasn’t supposed to twist you and make you kill people. It was supposed to make you a better person. Supposed to enrich you.
Except…
Love could be dark. Or maybe for some people, love brought out the darkness already in them.
Emerson knew darkness lived in her. So maybe therewasa ticking time bomb inside of her, after all. Tick, tick, ticking, and one day, it would explode. One day, she might explode. One day?—
“Darling, if you think any harder, I will literally hear your thoughts.”
Her head swung to the right.
Gray had entered his office. She’d been waiting for him. After avoiding him for thirty-six hours straight, she’d forced herself to head to the FBI building. To stride right inside and march to his inner sanctum.
Only the office had been empty. Sort of anticlimactic. So she’d sat in the chair across from his desk. Waited.
And she’d been so deep in her thoughts that Emerson hadn’t heard him glide into the room.
He offered her a half-smile. “Decided to stop running, did you?”
“I wasn’t running, I—” Emerson heaved out a breath. “Avoiding. I was avoiding, not running.”
He strolled around her and leaned his hip against the desk. His arms crossed over his chest as he stared down at her.
“I knew you had a lot of work to do, what with closing all the cases.” Cases that had all centered around her. The mess of her life.
“Your mother held a press conference yesterday.”
Emerson nodded. “Yes, I saw it. She’s apologetic. She’s the victim. She never saw the monster beneath Owen’s mask.”
“You don’t sound like you believe any of that.”
Her hands gripped the armrests of her chair. “My mother never believed me. No matter how many times I told her what was happening.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why?” Her chin lifted. “You believed me. From the very first moment. You never doubted anything I told you.”
“Of course, I didn’t.”
She shot out of the chair. Reached out for him. Stopped herself at the last minute. “Why not?”
“Because you’re my partner.”
“A partner you didn’t want.”
“Oh, Emerson, you know there is no one I want more in the entire world than you.”
His words made her ache. “I brought so much danger to you.”
“I don’t mind danger. It keeps life interesting.”
It didnot.“Why didn’t you ever doubt anything I said to you?”
He smiled at her. A soft smile. Not his megawatt, manipulative smile. “Want to hear a secret, Emerson?”
“I don’t know.” Blunt. Truthful. “I’ve heard a lot of secrets recently, and they have not been very good.”
