“What is that?” she asked, already knowing she wasn’t going to like it. He obviously didn’t.
He stood there, arms crossed and staring at her. “Look at it.”
She looked at his face and felt a pure, one hundred percent undiluted dread settle into her chest. She didn’t know how he’d found out but he had. She didn’t have to ask what he thought. His scowl declared his feelings better than any words could.
She shook her head as she steeled her heart, preparing for the hurt she was already feeling to get worse. “I don’t need to.”
He lifted the envelope and tossed it closer to her chest. “You aren’t going to bother looking?”
“No.”
“No defense?”
“There is no defense good enough to make you think I’m not this horrible person you’ve decided I am. You’ve already judged and condemned me. What’s the point?” And she couldn’t do it—beg him to believe she wasn’t a monster. There was nothing worth what that would do to her.
She got out of the bed, feeling too vulnerable there but not sure where else to go once she did. She was thankful she’d thrown a t-shirt on and she wasn’t still naked as he followed her over to where her bag sat. She reached in, grabbing a clean outfit as he came to stand next to her.
“You’ve got nothing to say?” he asked.
She’d let him think whatever he wanted but she couldn’t stop the urge to attack that was building fueled but the anger at him for always thinking the worst of her.
“Obviously I’m in cahoots with him. Why else would Keith kill my brother?” She couldn’t have sounded more toxic if she’d dipped her tongue in cyanide.
“I’m not saying you’re with Keith. I’m saying you knew him.”
She stopped dodging what she knew was in the folder and just laid it out there. If she told him more than he already knew, oh well. She didn’t care anymore. “Because he bought some artwork from my gallery? Because I had lunch with him when I had no idea who he was? Because that’s what you do when you have a business and clients?”
“You’ve been here weeks and in all that time you don’t say one word? There wasn’t one opportunity as we sat here night after night? Not a single chance to squeeze in, oh yeah, I might have known him in my previous life? You never say anything until you’re forced to. Not about this, not about Keith—”
“And how did you know? What were you doing? What about how long it took you to tell me you were the fucking grim reaper? You took plenty of time divulging that and I said nothing.”
“I also told you before I slept with you.”
“Good thing, because I wasn’t having you investigated.”
“You should’ve told me,” he said, as if nothing else she said mattered.
She looked at him. He was filled with distrust and anger. A few simple lunches with a client she had thought liked art and her gallery and she was a monster. That’s all it had taken. The anger drained out of her, replaced only by a deep disappointment, the likes of which she’d never felt so strongly before. “You know, for some reason I knew I’d get crucified for it. I knew this was how you’d react,” she said, not caring how he’d respond to that.
She sat on the floor next to her bag. Her entire life had been spinning out of control, somehow culminating to this very moment. She didn’t want to fight with him. Didn’t see a point in it. Just sat there on the floor with her only bag of possessions and wondered what she should do. She knew she should leave, even if it were to just go back to Cutty’s, but she couldn’t get up the energy to do anything but sit there.
And then the worst possible thing that can happen to a relationship occurred. They both fell silent and he walked away, and it wasn’t to take some space because things were getting too heated. It was because he didn’t have anything left to say and neither did she. She watched him walk to the door and that was the last time she saw him that day.
Chapter 30
Faith woke to Lars’ phone vibrating on the living room end table. It was the wee hours of the morning, and even the sun had refused to show its face yet. She didn’t know when he’d come back but in the hours that had passed, she’d grabbed her bag and walked out the door more times than she could count. But she’d always walked back in.
As pathetic as it might be, she found she couldn’t walk away from him that easily, no matter what he might think of her. She kept hoping somehow he’d come around, that the shock of what he’d seen had made him temporarily lose his judgment and that in the deep recesses of his mind—his heart—he knew who she really was.
He rolled over on the couch toward the table, the blanket pooled at his waist as he sat up, his bare tattooed back displayed.
“Yeah?” Lars said, answering in a voice that wasn’t so much quiet as weary.
He stood, phone in hand and walked a couple steps. His eyes met hers as she sat up in bed, making no pretense of being asleep.
“Ok, I’ll be down in fifteen minutes,” he said in a normal voice and then laid the phone on the table.
He looked at her and a flicker of recognition passed between them. She didn’t know what they were to each other and he didn’t either. They were in a no man’s land of emotion. Not friends but not enemies, no longer lovers, just floating above a cesspool of emotions with no real place to land.
“I need to let the guys in downstairs,” he said in a calm voice that made it clear he was done fighting. It was as if he couldn’t expend the energy to figure out what they were right now or what he wanted them to be.
“Should I come?” she asked, not for him but because whatever was going on, she still felt a loyalty to the guys. If something was happening that they might need her help for, she was going to be there, regardless of where she and Lars ended up.
He hesitated before he finally said, “Yes. That’s a good idea.”
She climbed out of bed and dug out a pair of jeans from the bag she lived out of, a harsh reminder that she was a visitor in his home. This situation had always been temporary. She should have realized that but she’d wanted to believe that it could be different.
“What are they coming over for?” she asked as he moved around the room. She knew what she was doing, clinging to find some normal ground between them, even if it was a conversation about other people.
“Karma, Fate’s girlfriend. There’s something going wrong with her tattoo,” he said, also acting like yesterday hadn’t happened.
“Something can go wrong with them?”
“It has nothing to do with the type you have. There are some other factors involved where Karma is concerned.”
“Oh.”
“It might be nice just to have another female face there,” he said.
Another female she’d never met. If she was having a problem, she wasn’t going to want to make idle chitchat with some woman she’d never met before. He either didn’t know women well at all, which struck her as highly unlikely from what she’d gathered of his past, or he was making excuses to have her participate. And why would he want her there?
Because Karma would be there. This wasn’t a truce or a cease-fire between them; he was setting her up for a fishing expedition. If she had to take a wild guess, Karma had a way of telling if someone was a good person or not, just like Cutty got hunches.
The truce idea, now blown to little pieces like a grenade had gone off on it, took with it her desire to participate. She forced herself to finish getting ready and follow Lars down to the shop anyway.
They’d just reached the door when Cutty arrived. He greeted Lars and then gave Faith a humble smile. She smiled back even though she knew he was the one who’d supplied the report to Lars.
When they walked in she spotted an old man walking around the place who would’ve made someone in their eighties look like a spring chicken. He was sporting a fedora and a sports jacket like it wasn’t boiling outside. She watched as he stopped in front of some tattoo books as if he were contemplating getting a piece.
“Who’s that?” she asked Cutty.