Page 40 of Samuel's Heart

“I need to make amends.” I need to honour his memory. I need to make this place a safer place for his kid. A kid who’s never going to know his dad, and that’s my fault. My fucking fault. I was a coward.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“You weren’t there.”

“I wasn’t. But I saw the videos and I trust Adrian.”

I raise my head to look at him, because I don’t understand what he’s trying to say.

“He used to talk about you all the time and was so proud of you. He would never have allowed someone he didn’t trust to cover his back.”

Yeah, and trusting me killed him. I should have been the one to die that day.

“Do you think he’d be happy to see you putting your life in danger to save people? Do you think he would be happy to have given his life to save you, knowing you’re doing everything you can to die?”

“I don’t want to die?” But the words come out uncertain, making them sound like I’m agreeing with what he just said.

“He would be so fucking sad to see you doing what you do.”

“What do you know?” I ask, because he wasn’t there, and he didn’t and doesn’t know me.

“We talked. A lot. Before he died, most of our conversations were about you. How proud he was of you and how he was sure that you’d become a good cop.”

I clench my fist to avoid punching him. How can he say these things to me? How can he put himself on a stand and judge me? How can I be so close to believing everything he’s saying?

I’d never heard his name before meeting Keegan, and now he’s implying he was in my life all this time?

“Even if this is true—not that I believe you—why are you telling me this?”

“Because I don’t want the work Adrian did with you to be wasted.” Aidan’s voice has a tone I’ve never heard before. His snarky tone is gone and replaced by one of respect and love. From Aidan? Is he really capable of loving anyone?

“I’m not wasting what he taught me. I’m honouring him by trying to save the people around me.”

“What you are doing right now is bending the rules to save someone that doesn’t need saving.”

“Rory needs to be saved. He needs to know what happened to his lover.”

“Yes, but why did it have to be you?”

“Because I was there.”

Aidan’s scoff leaves me stunned.

“You could have asked me to help him and I would have done it.”

It’s my turn to scoff.

“You? The same man who needed to be begged for information?”

“I wouldn’t have had Rory begging me. That was only for you. I was trying to teach you a lesson, but you never learn. Not even Adrian’s death, and the fact he died because you needed to help someone, has put this behaviour in the right perspective.”

What is he saying? I never put myself in danger. My aim is to help people, just like Adrian did.

“You really don’t understand, so let me spell it out for you. You were injured while trying to help someone, when the right course of action would have been to ask for help. You broke the police code to help someone breaking the law, for information he shouldn’t have. You reached out to someone, me, who bends the law every day for his own satisfaction without even thinking of the consequences.” He looks at me as if waiting for me to say something, but what can I say? He’s right.

I did all of that, but my life doesn’t matter.

“I’m not important.”

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