“What are you,” Cooper said to himself, “an idiot?” The icy wind stole the words right out of his mouth—literally—and whipped them away into nothingness, so he couldn’t even hear his own question. Which was just as well, since he had no idea how to answer it.
Leaning towards her had felt as natural as breathing. Maybe even more natural.
I’d die without air, but I’d fight to stay alive. If I didn’t have her—
If I didn’t have her, I don’t know what I could think of that would be worth fighting for. I don’t know that I could stand to live in this world another second if it didn’t have her in it.
He’d never felt like that before, but as strange and unexpected as it was, feeling like that didn’t scare him. He hadn’t run away from her out of fear.
The real answer slid into place, even colder than the wind around him.
He wanted to kiss her, but he didn’t want to hurt her. And he couldn’t think of a single way he could kiss her without hurting her eventually.
For most of the day, he’d been trying to convince himself that he needed to let go of his feelings for her, that there was no chance that anything could happen between them. Now he knew there was a chance. Gretchen knew he was innocent, and she wanted to help him get his freedom. And she had to be single, because she’d wanted him the same way he’d wanted her, and she wasn’t the kind of person to mess around.
What was between them was real—or it could be real, if they both gave in to their feelings.
If the only cost of pursuing it had been his own broken heart, Cooper would have done it in a second. It would have been worth it.
But now that he knew that she felt the same way—or at least that she felt some fraction of what he did—he couldn’t do that to her. He couldn’t let himself start something with her when there was no way that it would end well.
He could break his heart, but he couldn’t break hers.
If he ran, if he decided to risk that, then they couldn’t be together. He couldn’t ask her to give up her life, to give up the job that meant so much to her.
If he didn’t run, if he went to Bergen and trusted in the system that had already let him down... then he would probably die with another shiv between his ribs. Even if he lived, the odds were good that he’d never be a free man again, no matter how hard he and Gretchen tried to find the truth.
Did he really want to ask Gretchen to care about him, to tie her life to him, when he was going to be hundreds of miles away, hopeless, and trapped? How good could that possibly be for her?
And even if, through some slow and grinding process, she helped him get acquitted, even if his appeal worked out perfectly—
She would still be a US Marshal, the one who was supposed to step into Martin Powell’s shoes when he retired. But Martin couldn’t appoint her himself; all he could do was recommend her. She would need the approval of someone higher up the food chain... and there was no way she would ever, ever get it if she got involved with him. Even if his conviction was overturned, there would still be plenty of people who remembered him just as a criminal. There would always be the shadow of a doubt. And as Chief, Gretchen would have to be above suspicion.
Cooper felt his way along that painful thought even as he was feeling his way around the car. He couldn’t see it—he couldn’t even see his own hand in front of his face—so he had to keep touching it. If he let go, he’d end up wandering off into the blizzard, no matter how good his usual sense of direction was.
Maybe she didn’t want anything long-term. Maybe she was just cold, scared, and tense, and the chemistry between them was just too tempting to ignore. Maybe all she wanted was a spot of warmth and togetherness while the storm was still veiling them from the rest of the world.
But he didn’t think so. Nothing about the way she looked at him was casual. Nothing about what was between them felt casual.
One of them had to say no. And she had more to lose than