Page 66 of A Labor of Hate
“I don’t even know if Vivienne knows about his side business,” I deflected.“With his restaurants, he’s got the perfect cover and reason to be experimenting in labs and whatnot.”
He leveled me with a stare, unflinching as rain wet his face.“That doesn’t change the answer to my question, Lex.”
I grit my teeth and sighed.The back of my eyes stung, and my blood pressure spiked.The blackening sky didn’t help.“What must it be like to be you?To see things in such black and white and never second-guess?”
He rotated so he took the brunt of the rain, leaving me leaning against the relative safety of the house with him as my shield.“There isn’t any gray area to this to begin with.Gauthier is breaking the law and costing people their lives.You knew what we’d have to do coming into this.”
My nostrils flared.Indignance and outrage sparked under my lungs.How could I possibly expect him to understand?He was the cold, hard logic half of this partnership.He hadn’t looked in her eyes as she showed the scars on her heart—hadn’t received her kindness time and time again.Logically, I knew betraying Vivienne was what I had to do.But it felt…wrong.Viscerally, despicablywrong.
“Remember what McBride said about the lines between what’s real and what’s fake getting blurred,” Colt warned, his voice as gentle as it was reproachful.A raindrop dripped from his hair and slid down his temple.“Your relationship with Vivienne is fake, no matter how real it feels.She’s friends with LexMartin, a made-up cover for the sole purpose of this assignment.She doesn’t even know the real you, so how could she really be your friend?”
My eyes closed as his words cut deep.Not because they were barbed or malicious, but because they were true.Insults and sarcasm could wound, sure, but truth could level cities.Slice clean through to your core.
Vivienne didn’t know the real me.Her kindness and friendship had never been for me.It had been for a fictitious dance instructor from Nebraska, the mask I wore around her like a second skin.Nothing about our relationship was real.
Just like Colt and me.
We were two agents thrown together for this assignment, working toward a common goal.We weren’t a couple.We weren’t a family.No matter how right it felt to meld our lives together, to eat together and bicker and laugh and imagine us being something more, none of it was real.I had no husband, no baby on the way.He was playing his part, and I was getting sucked into the fantasy.
And maybe that’s why it hurt so much.He was the only one who knew the real me—the workhorseandhot mess.I couldn’t keep my work-sona and my personal life separate as easily anymore, so I’d let my walls down altogether.I’d shown him my soft underbelly.Cried in front of him.In return, he’d let the corner of his mask slip.Just enough to glimpse a sliver of who he really was, and that was all it took for me to dive head-first into the fantasy.
Maybe I’d wanted to bewantedso badly—to beseenso badly—it hadn’t mattered how little I truly knew about him.I’d convinced myself that the miniscule peek I’d gotten of the real him was enough—that it made all of what I’d learned about him real.
But the Colt I’d fallen for wasn’t the real Colt at all.It couldn’t be, not entirely.Because, like he’d said, none of this was real.None of it.
And I seemed to be the only one having a hard time remembering that.
My heart shrank down a size and froze into a block of ice.I squared my shoulders and opened my eyes, wiping my expression of all emotion.The emptiness I’d managed while chatting with Vivienne earlier returned and magnified until my flat voice reverberated against its barren walls.“I’ll do what it takes.”
I climbed the stairs to the backdoor, no longer caring about the rain drenching me as it fell in sheets.I cast a glance behind me before I went inside.Colt hadn’t moved from his position, his T-shirt now completely soaked through and his normally meticulous hair plastered against his forehead as he watched me leave.The furrow in his brow had deepened, and his frown sharpened, but still he didn’t move.
I kept my expression neutral as I nodded at him.I was here to do a job.Not fall for my coworker, not make friends or play house or pretend I had something worth coming home to besides my goldfish.
Just a job.
And I’d do well to remember that.
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
ON MY LISTof semi-rational phobias, thunderstorms took first place.Followed closely by worms and millipedes, because nothing should have such statistical outliers when it came to number of feet.
So when thunder rocked the house, I’d hopped out of the shower as fast as humanly possible.If I was going to die, it wouldn’t be from getting zapped in my birthday suit.I’d had no plans to leave my room the rest of the night and risk interacting more with Colt, so I’d changed into my pajamas, drawn the blinds, and left the belly to dry in peace after its post-spa deep-clean.
And that was how I’d remained, llama-clad and vegging out in bed while watchingThe Princess Brideto take my mind off the storm, when Colt knocked on the bedroom door.His knock was punctuated by another clap of thunder and flash of lightning through the blind’s cracks, and I nearly jumped out of my skin as I rushed to the door.The listening device connected to the bedside lamp’s power probably wouldn’t pick up on something as faint as my spouse knocking on the door to the room we supposedly shared.Not in this storm.But I didn’t want to risk it, just in case.
I whipped the door open, and a wave of tantalizing aromas crashed into me.It was sweet and spicy and savory all at once and unmistakably familiar.Of all the meals Colt brought for lunch at the office, this one was my favorite.My mouth watered at the thought of tasting it for myself.
When I locked eyes with Colt as he stood in the doorway, though, I shoved my hunger aside in lieu of feeling and expressing nothing.A blank slate.
His frown and furrowed brow hadn’t changed since I’d seen him in the backyard an hour ago.If anything, they’d become more pronounced as his eyes flicked over me.His hair was uncharacteristically haphazard, like he’d brushed it out of his eyes while it was still wet and called it good.No gel.No styling.
It was so unlike him I almost let my mask of indifference slip.
Almost.
He raised the plate in his hand toward me.Chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans that smelled so heavenly I considered checking for a halo hidden among them, with a set of silverware rolled into a napkin on the side.“You didn’t eat dinner.”
“I’m not hungry.”
