Page 86 of Reveal

I stare at him and just shake my head. “This is never going to go away, is it?”

“It will. I’ll make sure of it.”

“At what cost, though?” I ask, my voice breaking in ways I don’t want it to.

“I don’t know,” he murmurs as he pulls me against him and wraps his arms around me. And it feels so good, to be here, to feel safe, when I’m sure the sense of security is just as false as me pretending Carter is going to go away. “I just don’t know.”

“Maybe I should just hand over what I have on him. Losing all of this isn’t worth it,” I say with my cheek resting on his chest and his lips pressing a kiss to the crown of my head. Lucy. Him. My freedom if Carter calls the authorities. The three things that matter the most to me.

“What do you have on him, Vaughn?” he asks for a second time.

I tense at the question, at him asking to know the secrets I keep from everyone to protect myself. My safekeeping. At the last piece of myself that I haven’t given him yet—my confidentiality. “Pictures of Carter. . . let’s just say with his pants down.”

His pause in response tells me he knows just how big of a deal my answering him was.

“The underage girls.” My head whips up at his comment, and he simply nods. “His wife is my client. I’ve investigated him as well.”

“Oh.” But for some reason I feel a little more at ease divulging the information now, because I hadn’t thought about it that way.

“What else do you have? There has to be more.”

“Some kind of phone records.”

“And he knows you have these?” he asks, leaning back so he can see my eyes when I nod.

“Yes.”

“He knows specifically what they are?”

I shrug. “I just told him I had a call log. He acted like it wasn’t a big deal and said his calls were public record, but . . .”

“But what?”

“I don’t know. They mean something to him.”

“What are they of?” he asks. “What—”

“I don’t exactly know.” I shake my head and feel stupid that I don’t have an answer. “They were emailed to my investigator anonymously. The IP address and fake email address were traced back to a terminal at a public library. The email just said that this paper was extremely important if someone connected the right dots. It was signed, A Concerned Citizen.”

Ryker angles his head to the side and narrows his eyes in thought. I wait for him to ask for more—to see the call log—and I struggle between giving myself completely to him or drawing a line in the sand I can’t let him cross.

“And they’re in safekeeping?”

I nod, almost breathing a sigh of relief when he doesn’t ask.

“What a clusterfuck,” he mutters with a shake of his head. “I need to think about this. About all of it. We’ll figure it out. I’ll help you figure it out.”

“Ryker . . . you don’t need to get involved. The last thing you need—”

“It’s you. I’m already involved.” He leans forward and brushes a tender kiss to my lips that feels so resolute, almost as if he, too, is wishing away the situation.

There’s a subtlety to him right now—a softness—that I’ve never seen before. It’s in the way he stares at me across the distance, brandy-colored eyes looking at me from under thick lashes while Lucy sleeps soundly in the back seat of some ridiculously expensive sports car. A car that most men would freak out over because the glitter in her hair might get on its precious leather. And the whole of the moment—of him—is enough for me to realize that he knows he screwed up.

We all do.

If Lucy could comprehend things like I do, when she’s older would she judge me for the mistakes I’m making now? For running Wicked Ways, even though in the end the risks are all for her?

How can I not forgive him?