Page 125 of A Smile Full of Lies
“Knox.”
Still nothing.
I picked up my pace until I was next to him.
“She’s going to make it. The surgeons are good.”
“She shouldn’t have been there,” he growled, voice low and dangerous. “She shouldn’t have fucking gone in alone. As a matter of fact, she shouldn’t have gone at all.”
“She wasn’t alone,” I said. “I was backup. She was wired. I was two minutes out.”
He halted so fast I nearly ran into him.
His gaze turned toward me, feral and gleaming.
“Two minutes out,” he repeated, voice razor-sharp. “She got stabbed, Alyssa. I don’t give a fuck how close you were — he stabbed her. She almost died.”
“She didn’t,” I snapped, stepping in front of him. “Because she fought back. Because she was smart. Because she believed in what she was doing.”
His jaw worked, chest heaving.
“She should’ve told me.”
“Would you have let her do it?”
“Hell no.”
“Exactly.” I let that sit there for a beat, then softened my voice. “She did it to protect you.”
His brow furrowed.
“You said that once already. Protect me from what, exactly?”
“She didn’t want you to find out that Thayer was involved and do something that would land you in prison,” I said. “She knew you’d go nuclear.”
He went still.
“She cares about you, Knox. And you know damn well she does,” I said. “This wasn’t a betrayal. It was an act of faith. She trusted me to get her out. Trusted herself to get the confession. And she did. Because she knew what was at stake. To be precise – you.”
His throat bobbed, hard.
I lowered my voice further.
“Don’t let your anger drown out what this really means. She solved the case, Knox. For you. Because you’re important to her.”
He looked away, his breath sharp, ragged.
“Go sit down,” I said quietly. “She’ll need you when she wakes up.”
He didn’t answer — but he turned and headed for the waiting room, tension still bleeding off him in waves.
I followed at a distance, heart hammering in my chest.
Knox dropped into the vinyl chair outside the ICU bay, his elbows braced on his knees, head bowed. His hands flexed over and over like he didn’t know what to do with them now, when he couldn’t wrap them around someone’s throat.
I stood a few feet away, giving him space — but not too much. He was barely holding it together. I could see it in the way his jaw clenched, the twitch at the corner of his eye, the bone-white grip of his knuckles.
More than an hour passed – he sat there, frozen, holding himself still by sheer willpower. I gave him coffee and he drank it, almost as if he wasn’t even aware of doing so. I told him, in a quiet voice, exactly what had happened, what Thayer had confessed to, what evidence there was. I wasn’t sure that he heard any of it, but me talking to him seemed to help him stay steady. Then an exhausted looking nurse stepped into the room, and came to us.
