Page 44 of Wicked Sin

Tears are sliding down my face as I turn on the water. The part of my brain that is always a judgmental bitch notices how nice the bathroom is. Luke’s house is tiny, and his guest room has the decor of a prison cell, but this room is completely modern. And he didn’t buy most of these fixtures at a discount home store, either.

Count all the fancy shit, my brain screams. I try to guess at the cost of the mosaic tile, the marble floor, the European toilet. But I don’t get to the tub before the tears take over, blinding me, and I sink to my knees, letting my sorrow become one with the steamy spray.

It takes ages for the silent sobs to abate. It occurs to me that Luke might worry and might come up and check on me. But I can’t bring myself to stand, to pretend I’m fine.

I’m not.

He doesn’t bother me though, and finally, the well of sadness runs dry. That’s the thing about sadness. If you sit with it long enough—or lie in a steamy shower with it—eventually it morphs into something manageable. Smaller, tighter, put-in-your-pocket-able.

If you fight against it, that’s when the sadness gets ugly. Too big, too scary to get on with your day.

It’s okay to be sad.It’s a mantra I tell peer counseling clients all the time. A lesson that took me a long time to learn.

My problem is that I’m not a nice sad person.

I’m not a nice person at all. I’m prickly and picky and generally high-maintenance.

Everyone is different. None of us are better or worse than others.Another mantra I tell people.

But this one isn’t a lesson I’ve been able to internalize. I am definitely worse than others, and that’s just my burden to bear.

I take my time once I’m out of the shower. Each step of putting myself back together is a piece of self-care. Moisturizing my face, braiding my hair, putting on clean clothes.

By the time I get downstairs, I feel nearly human.

Luke is on his phone, but he gestures at the kitchen, where I find coffee.Yes.

“Can I make you some breakfast?” he asks when he joins me a minute later.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Okay.” He sets his phone on the counter. “I just got an update from the captain. She got read the riot act last night, but stood her ground that the best place for you to be right now is somewherenobodyknows.”

“So you’re nobody?”

“Close enough.” He taps his fingers on the counter. “The deal here is that both of us are going to keep our comings and goings to a minimum. Nobody knows I own this place, but I can’t guarantee I won’t be followed back from the station.”

“Are you going to work?”

“Not today. But the FBI lab is almost done with our forensic evidence, and I’m going to want to be there when they get walked through what the techs have found.”

“They’ll allow that?”

“Sure. They don’t like that we lost you, but that risk is on us, and we need to have a permanently functional working relationship between local and federal law enforcement. Right now there are at least three quiet investigations of LAPD wrongdoing by the FBI, and probably one going back the other way.”

My mouth falls open. “No way.”

“Way. Doesn’t mean they won’t be watching me like a hawk, though. They’re not going to trust me any further than they can throw me.”

I don’t know why I’m shocked. Nothing should shock me now. But I really thought the dysfunctional world I grew up in was the worst, exceptionally terrible, and I’d gotten away from it.

Turns out, no so much.

“Maybe I should actually go somewhere on my own. So you don’t need to lie to them.”

“Get that thought out of your head.”

“But you said—”

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