Protect & Serve(17)

I went quiet for a moment, the memories drifting through my head, taking a little piece of myself with them. “Don’t tell me it wasn’t my fault.”

A silence fell between us, uncomfortable and heavy.

“So, yeah,” I whispered, my voice hoarse and quavering. “Yeah, I get it. Sometimes we don’t want to see the truth, because it would mean we’re the monsters. And that’s not an easy thing to look in the mirror and accept.”

“But we can’t change the past,” Nathan said, his voice warm and tender. “We can’t go back in time and undo the damage we caused with our willful ignorance. The only thing we can do is…”

“Change the future,” I finished for him. “Yeah. I know. But it doesn’t make it better.”

“Not if you don’t let it,” he said. “Sandra… what I did… what I didn’t do… that’s going to take a long time for me to forgive. And I’ll work through it, someday. But what happened to you and your sister? That was a lifetime ago. That’s something you’ve paid for time and time again. I can see it in your eyes. Haven’t you punished yourself enough? What would Jenny say?”

“Jenny’s dead,” I said. Even though it had been years, tears sprang to my eyes like I’d lost her just yesterday. “She can’t say anything.”

“But you can,” he insisted, standing up from the table and walking to my side. He knelt down on the ground and took both my hands in his, and I gasped audibly. “You can tell yourself you’re forgiven. You can stop telling yourself that you’re worthless and to blame. You can tell yourself it’s time to move on and that you’ll never make the same mistakes again. And you can tell yourself that you’ll always be there for young people like Jenny who got lost along the way, and that you’ll use your position in the police department to offer them a way out.”

I looked down at our hands, my vision blurred by my sorrow. This was the first time since I’d known him that Nathaniel Hale took the time to ask me about my past. It was the first time I genuinely believed he was listening to me. Staring at our entwined fingers I just wanted to cry. It was beautiful.

“Doesn’t that seem a hell of a lot more fair to you than spending your whole life as a prisoner of your own guilt? And doesn’t that seem more fair to the lives you could save by doing so?”

I stared into his eyes, into those gold-green gems glittering in the candlelight. I was looking for the lie, for the thing that would tell me he wasn’t sincere. I didn’t believe anybody could know what I did and tell me to forgive myself. I didn’t believe anyone could look at me the way he was looking at me right now and really mean it.

But I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find anything but honesty and acceptance. This was a man I’d known only as a sexual fling and a childish asshole, but now, looking into his eyes, I felt like we were one and the same. We were both looking for redemption. What if we’d found it in each other?

“You deserve better than this,” he said to me, and I couldn’t help it; I threw my arms around his neck, and without giving myself even a millisecond to reconsider, I kissed him as hard as I could.

Our lips crashed together, but somehow fit as perfectly as they always did. I felt fireworks go off in my chest and stars burst behind my closed eyelids. I felt the heat of his body pressed against mine, the scorching ferocity of his mouth blending with my own, his arms moving around my waist to cradle me, comfort me, make me whole again.

As his strong fingers clutched at my back, I pulled away, trembling violently. I looked again into his hazy, lust-filled eyes. His jaw was clenched as he searched my face, looking very much like a man doing his best to hold his desires back.

“Sandra,” he whispered, “we shouldn’t do this…”

“I know,” I told him, my lips aching for another kiss. But it wouldn’t be right—not like this. Not when I was still assigned to his case and sworn to protect him. I couldn’t do that if I was compromised by my feelings. I’d broken things off with Nathaniel Hale for a good reason, and I had to keep a professional distance no matter what my body was telling me.

I stood up, liberating myself from the circle of his arms and wiping my eyes with the back of my wrist. Every cell in my body screamed for me to return to him, but I couldn’t let my heart overrule my head. I couldn’t put Nathan in potential danger by letting myself get distracted, and after what I’d just done, I couldn’t bear to sit there and take another bite of dinner.