Alek blinked. Just once. Very slowly.
Like maybe if I didn’t react, the words would vanish.
I looked into Alek’s eyes. They were cerulean blue, but they had darkened into something ashen and almost colorless.
“You know what I remember the most from when he and I slept together?” I asked, because it felt like I couldn’t stop talking now. “Not like, last night. Eight years ago. Before I got pregnant.”
“I don’t want to—”
I ignored him. “I remember how he used to talk to me,” I said. “He would whisper in my ear and tell me everything I did to him,like he was narrating a play or something. And it would make me come apart.”
“Ruby, this isn’t really—”
I trained my gaze on him. “You have never been prudish,” I said. “You have always asked and shared details. This is the detail. This is it. I have never felt as loved as I do as when Kieran is fucking me. Do you understand that?”
His hand was on my shoulder, squeezing tight. I couldn’t see anymore. My eyes were brimming with tears, hot and heavy and painful.
So…not hysterical laughter.
We were going with tears.
“I don’t want him to take my daughter. He did me a huge favor when he ghosted me. I’m old enough to see that now. I think, in some way, I was furious but that was…I don’t know. Immature. No. Worse than that. Callow. Shortsighted. He was right to do it. Now he’s back in my life, demanding his place in Rosie’s life. And he’s just killed a man for me. How do I love and hate him all at once? How’s that possible?”
He sighed. “Well, I’m not a therapist, but I don’t think you love him.”
“I mean…you don’t?”
“He’s clearly really good at making you feel loved, and when you’ve been married to someone like Julian as long as you had, any man who makes you feel loved is a man welcome in yourbed, I think,” he said slowly, softly, as if he knew he was treading into dangerous territory. “But I also don’t think you hate him.”
“You don’t?” I asked again. I wanted to argue with him. To tell him how wrong he was.
Except I couldn’t, because he wasn’t wrong.
Whatever smart retort I had, it immediately died on my tongue when I looked at his face.
“I think that you know this is a bad idea. Iknowyou know this is a bad idea.”
“What, telling you the truth?” I asked. “Sorry—bad joke. Emotions make lawyers uncomfortable.”
He rolled his eyes, didn’t even flash me a pitying smile.
“You’re a lawyer, Ruby,” he said. “And you know it’s all a bad idea. Letting him stay last night, letting him touch you. But you know what’s the real mistake here? The way you’re thinking about this. The way you’re framing it in your own head. You’re talking about it, about him, like he’s a dream. He’s not a dream. He’s a panic response—and, well…a killer. Just because he killed someone who deserved it doesn’t mean he hasn’t killed people who didn’t. The sex was a trauma bond. You’re in shock and you’re confusing survival with something else.”
I turned away from him, the shame hitting harder than I expected.
Alek let a breath out through his nose, then reached for my hand. His palm was clammy. “Kieran will never take Rosie away,” hesaid. “I don’t care what choices you make. I’ll fight like hell to make sure that never happens. And so will you.”
“The Callahans can’t ever know she’s one of them.”
“She’s not,” he said. “She’s Ruby Marquez’s daughter. She’s the daughter of Boston’s DA, not the criminal underworld.”
“Right.”
“But before any of that, we need you to take care of yourself.Rosie needs her momto take care of herself. You can keep spinning in circles about how you feel for Kieran and about what it means, but you need to pull yourself together before the weekend is over. You have to sell the idea that you’re still married to Julian to the press for another, I don’t know, six months, a year? You need to keep him on your side. He can’t know about Kieran.”
“He saw the bruises. I told him I slept with the window repair guy and he got carried away with the choking.”
For the first time, Alek laughed. “Did he buy it?”
