Page 148 of The Woman By the Lake

That was when it happened, though for the life of me, I didn’t know why it happened then. I’d journal about it later and settle on the fact that I knew he could take no more.

I also knew I couldn’t be part of anything he had to take, to look after, to worry about.

I further knew, if I had another week with him, or another fifty years, he was a man who’d break his back and sell his soul to look out for me, so I had no real power over saving him from that.

But he was going to get that back from me.

Which was why, with really crappy timing, I asked, “Do you know that the police don’t clean up crime scenes?”

I watched his long body still, before he was on me, his hands cupping my jaw, his face in mine.

“Honey.”

“Before you meet Maribeth, you should know, she was the one who discovered what bioremediation specialists were. And she’s the one who hired them. She’s also the one who paid for it, even if I’m loaded, she’s loaded too. And last, she was the one who went with me before they came, because I had to see. And I saw, baby. I saw everything.”

If his expression had been ravaged before, it was wrecked now.

Totally crappy timing.

He slid his fingers back into my hair, cupping my head, one over the other, and shoved my face in his chest.

My voice was husky and muffled by his tee when I said, “I can’t have you taking anymore. Enough is enough. I don’t want to be the emotional time bomb you’re worried about while you’re forced to deal with everything. So I’ll tell you, I’ve been trying to figure out how to begin to tackle it, but I honestly don’t know how to process the sheer ugliness of it. I’m landing on the fact she fought like a hellcat. And I’m so damned proud that she did. I know it’s not selfish to think this next, it’s just my mom. I’m certain she died not wanting to die. Knowing she had so much more life to live. But she also died before she actually died, knowing what her dying would do to me. And that was part of why she fought so hard to stay alive. It was for her, definitely, but it was also for me. And that means everything to me.”

He let my head go and wrapped his arms around my shoulders, crushing me to him so powerfully, it squished my face into his chest, and I had to turn my cheek to it in order to breathe.

“I think—” I stopped and started again. “I think I don’t need to speak words. To share my pain in order to understand it. I’ll never process it, Riggs. I don’t know him, I never did, I never will, and I’m glad of that. He not only doesn’t bear contemplation, he doesn’t deserve it. I know who he was will mess with me occasionally, but in the end, he’s a nonentity. He doesn’t matter. Mom was right way back then. My real dad died in a plane crash, and what I became was about her and Dedulya. That man had no real part in making me.”

“Yeah,” he grunted.

“And no matter how much I think about it or talk about it, bottom line, I’ll never understand how one person can do that to another. Not if they share a child. Not ever. So it’ll be a waste of time and effort and emotion to try. I’ll never come to terms with how I lost her. Because the bottom line is, she’s gone. I’ve lost her. I’ll miss her until I die. So it’s just about time, and using it to learn how to live with it.”

“Yeah,” he grunted again.

“So stop worrying about me. I’m okay.”

“Okay, princess,” he murmured, his voice gruff.

I tipped my head back to look up at him, and no evasiveness, he looked right at me with red rimming his beautiful, silvery eyes. He wasn’t crying, as such, but he was fighting it, probably so he could be strong for me (as well as maintain his macho-man badassness).

And I was in denial if I didn’t admit to myself, I was fighting falling in love with him.

That didn’t scare me.

I was okay with it, even if what we had lasted just a week.

Because me, and Mom, and Trevor, and Lincoln, Roosevelt and Sarah Whitaker, and people like us, never knew how long we had, and way back when Riggs and I first started to become the us we were now, Riggs was right.

The best way to fuck the ones who fuck you was to get as much out of life as you can, be as happy as you can, and do the things you enjoy as much as you can.

So I was going to do that, now and forever.

Starting with Riggs.

“You said something about martinis?” I prompted.

For a second, he looked blank with surprise.

Then his lips twitched.

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