Page 85 of The Trust We Broke
“You never did love the cold,” I say.
I just hold her closer. My legs immediately warm with her weight and thick coat.
There are so many things I want to say, but every word is heavy and stuck in my throat.
“I’m going to be brave and go first,” Lucy says. “I left your house, and I’ve tried to convince myself it’s because I waited for two hours.”
“And it wasn’t?”
She shakes her head. “I ran. I got scared. Everything built up. What you were going to say when you got back. But I realized that running is something I do a lot. It’s a pattern I’m going to have to break, and it stops, now. I ran from here after your trial. I ran to New York after law school because it felt like the most different place to here I could go to. I’ve been running for the majority of the last decade, and it doesn’t even help.”
I dissect my feelings. “Guess that’s what’s so hard to swallow. That I somehow let you down, because when it really mattered, you didn’t feel like you could run to me.”
She shakes her head. “It wasn’t that. It’s that I knew youtoowell. You’re a good and principled man. You’d do the right thing. You’d serve every single day of the sixteen years without complaint, rather than capitulate to my father.”
“And you didn’t want me to serve time for protecting you,” I say. “So, you were noble, divorced me, and I was out in four years. I wish it had happened differently, because I would have come and found you when I got out. Sitting here, thinking I would still be in prison if you hadn’t…yeah, I’m grateful.”
Her eyes flash to mine. “You are?”
I nod, words getting caught in my throat.
“I take full accountability. And I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I hurt Corinne too. I’ve started to pull the case together. With evidence from Dad’s office, it’s going to be easy to prove that, beyond the initial assault outside the venue, you weren’t there. I’ll help you get your record cleared of the things you didn’t do, Zach, even if that means hiring a lawyer who isn’t me to avoid conflict of interest. And I’m going to ask for a full wiping as part of the restitution.”
“I thought you didn’t want me because what I’d done had scared you. Or because I had a criminal record,” I admit. “Thought you had second thoughts on how it would reflect on you as a lawyer, and all.”
The color drains from her face. “Oh, God. No. That wasn’t it at all. I was proud of you, what you’d done for me. I promise you; it was never about that.”
I rub a hand over my face, and my shoulders sag in relief. “We should have had this conversation back then, Luce.”
“Maybe. But I feel like my father would always have interfered, and you would always have been the one who cameoff worst. It felt like a self-fulfilling prophecy that he’d ruin you, somehow. And I’d just had my first real glimpse at how ruthless my father could be.” She cups my cheek. “But I promise I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to show you how sorry I am.”
The rest of my life.
Fuck. I’m about to do it. I’m about to fall in love with Lucy De Bose all over again.
“There’s other stuff we’re going to have to figure out, Luce. Our lives and club life are overlapping in ways that aren’t good for anyone.”
“I understand and can show you everything I have. It appears my father was in deep with the Rebels for a long time. But you know how we were taught to prep a trial?” she begins.
I shake my head. “Not really.”
“They say, start with your closing argument. Work backwards. Decide what you want the jury to feel at the end, then build every fact, every witness, every word to that goal.”
It makes sense that she’s dipped into legal analogies and talks like she’s in a courtroom, all cool and composed, like her heart isn’t beating as hard and as fast as mine. But I know better, like I’ve always known better when it comes to her. It’s in the way she nibbles on her bottom lip, and the way her eyes crinkle with apprehension.
“Closing arguments, huh?” I fix her hat, that has risen up a little, making sure it’s low and covering her ears so they don’t get cold. “That sounds very final.”
She gives me the half smile I used to dream about when the nights got too quiet. God, I missed it. Missed her voice. Missed the way she feels in my arms. Even missed the way she tries to out-logic every mess she ever gets into. Like love is something you can argue into submission.
“So, you build the case with the end in mind?” I ask.
“Exactly.” She swallows and looks out at the river. “If this were a case. If this”—she looks back to me and gestures between us—“were going in front of a jury, I’d want to end with the truth. That I always loved you. That I never stopped. That I want to come home to you at the end of every day, even if we argue, even if we fall apart sometimes.”
“You think there is still a case here, Counselor?” I ask. Because my thoughts before she arrived here suggested there could be. “You wanna build us back up? Start from now and work our way toward that closing scene?”
“I think the jury’s still out.” Her smile is hopeful, but her eyes search mine like she doesn’t quite trust the wordyes, yet. “But I also think we get to choose what the closing looks like. We can decide, now, how we want to be at the end of this—five years from now, ten, fifty. Whether we’re still miserable and angry exes with a wild story, or we’re the couple who figured out how to rebuild from the wreckage.”
I toss my ego to the other side of the river. It’s telling me I’m risking letting a woman make a fool of me twice. That people will judge me for going back to her.
