entire lifetime with me leaving out this huge piece of your life.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “What difference does it make? You already knew.”
“It makes a big fucking difference. You didn’t trust me enough to let me in.”
“Rightfully so!” I yell, too pissed off to tell him that I had been ready to come clean about all of it, that I had wanted to tell him the truth so badly, that the only reason I didn’t was because he had left last night.
“I took you away to the shore because I wanted to spend one last weekend with you, one last time before it all blew up, but I had it all planned out.”
“What was the plan?”
“I went to the captain and told him I had found the evidence. I’d seen it, seen you put it in the safe, but I couldn’t find the combination. I explained that everything we needed to put you away for good was in that safe. He set up last night's raid.”
“Then what?”
“We got home from the beach and you were tired, I sent you to go take a shower and I used the opportunity to get into your safe and grab the drive.”
“That’s why you were in my office?”
“Yes, I needed to get the evidence out of there before anyone could find it.”
“If you were trying to help me, why didn’t you just say so? Why didn’t you just tell me what was going on?”
“I needed your reaction to be genuine. If you were anticipating it, you might have made people suspicious. It was better this way.”
“So you left me there.”
“I had to, babe. I had to leave but I came home, I came here, and hid the drive.”
I furrow my brow, feeling more than a little confused again. “Isn’t that like obstruction of justice or something?”
“Or something.”
I look back and forth between him and the drive he holds in his hands. I don’t know what to think anymore, it’s all so much to take in. Is he telling the truth? Can I possibly trust that what he’s saying is true? Does it even matter anymore?
“What are you going to do with it?”
He holds out his hand, palm open, the flash drive in the center.
“Take it.”
“Why are you doing this?” I whisper, completely taken aback by what’s happening.
“Because I love you, because I know that you’re a good person, and because I know that you’re intention was never to hurt anybody. You honestly believed you were protecting those girls. I get that, but you have to end it, Victoria.”
I reach out and take the drive, feeling a little bit of relief for the first time since this all started.
“I told you it’s done.”
“What about the girls?”
“There’s always going to be some who fall through the cracks and don’t want to change, but the others I’m helping to find jobs.”
We stare at each other for a while. I take in his features, memorize them, thinking that this could be the last time I ever see them.
“I should go.”
He moves fast, wrapping his arm around my waist and pulling me to him. My hands instinctively go to his chest, bracing myself and barring him from pulling me any closer.
“Don’t go.”
“I have to,” I tell him with very little conviction.
“No.”
“This is all too much Na- Eric.” I sigh, getting tripped up on his name.
“Nathan,” he corrects me.
“You’re a cop, and I’m a criminal.”
“Don’t say that. You’re a good person.”
“Even if I wanted to be with you, which I don’t, it wouldn’t even be possible. You’d get your ass fired.”
“We don’t know that yet. It’s a gray area.”
He’s lying; I can tell it worries him. “Could you go to jail?”
“Only if they can prove I withheld evidence, and I’m not going to tell them, and I don’t think you’re going to tell them because you’d be incriminating yourself.”
“And if they find out we’ve had a sexual relationship.”
“I’d probably lose my job.”
“Yet you want me to stay.”
“Once you’re cleared, once the investigation is over, they can’t do shit to me. It’s frowned upon, yes, I’m not going to lie, but it’s not illegal. I know that you want to stay.”
I shake my head, pushing out of his hold. “I don’t know you.”
“You know everything that’s important about me. You know me. I’m the same man who you fell in love with. I can be that for you, and I want to be that for you.”
“You are fucking unbelievable. I never want to see you again.” I don’t know