The Institute, Daddy Issues(98)

“I will come to your house to­night. We will re­view these to­gether.”

I re­fused to meet his eyes.

“If that’s the way you want it.”

“It is,” Salt said quietly.

“Good.” The Cap­tain slapped his desk with fi­nal­ity. “Come back in to­mor­row and tell me what you want to do.”

What I wanted to do was go dig a hole and bury my­self in it but I couldn’t say that out loud. Couldn’t give my bas­tard of an ex-part­ner the sat­is­fac­tion of know­ing how badly he had hurt me—how deeply his treach­ery cut.

In­stead, I lif­ted my chin and left the Cap­tain’s of­fice with my head held high and my heart aching.

It’s your fault, whispered a little voice in my head. Your fault he left and he’s never com­ing back.

I knew it was true but it didn’t make his be­trayal hurt any less.





Chapter Sev­en­teen

The knock on my front door startled me. I was stand­ing in the kit­chen, cut­ting up ve­get­ables for a crudités plat­ter to serve while we re­viewed the video evid­ence.

I know mak­ing a tray of snacks sounds stu­pid but it was what I had done the first time Salt had ever come over to my house, not long after we’d be­come part­ners. I for­get why he came—prob­ably to re­view evid­ence from some case or other. Any­way, I had made a ve­get­able plat­ter with sour cream dip and now I found my­self do­ing it again. I don’t know why—maybe I was try­ing to take my­self back to the time be­fore I’d cared about my part­ner as more than a part­ner. Maybe I wanted to re­wind the clock and pre­tend noth­ing had ever happened between us.

Now, how­ever, I de­cided it was a ri­dicu­lous idea. It wasn’t like I could pre­tend away the hurt in­side me—the gap­ing hole of loneli­ness that had opened in my chest where my heart used to be. All I could do was try to hide it and get through this night as well as I could.

The knock soun­ded again. I threw down the knife and, leav­ing the half fin­ished car­rots and cel­ery on the cut­ting board, went to an­swer the door.

Salt was stand­ing there look­ing very tall and grim with the flash drive curled in one large fist. He has his own key to my place so he could have just let him­self in but clearly he wanted to keep things formal. Well, fine—I could do that too.

“Good even­ing, De­tect­ive Saltanov,” I said evenly.

Salt didn’t look happy but he re­turned my greet­ing in kind.

“De­tect­ive Sug­ar­baker,” he rumbled, in­clin­ing his head.

“Won’t you come in?” I stepped aside to let him enter. Nor­mally when we went to each other’s houses we made ourselves at home. Salt al­ways went right to my re­fri­ger­ator to see what I had to eat. But now he stepped in­side and then just stood there. It was a re­minder to me that things weren’t “nor­mal” between us and never would be again.

“This way,” I said shortly, and led him to my liv­ing room as though he didn’t know the way.

Salt fol­lowed me si­lently and had a seat on the couch when we got there.

“The flash drive?” I asked.

Word­lessly, he dropped it into my hand.

I went over to my laptop and plugged in the flash drive. Thanks to Salt, who had found a way to hook my com­puter to my tele­vi­sion, I was able to bring the im­ages up on my large flat-screen.

I grabbed the re­mote and, since Salt was sit­ting on the couch, I took the love­seat which sat per­pen­dic­u­lar to it.

It hurt my heart to do that—to sit away from him. I couldn’t help re­mem­ber­ing all the times we had sat to­gether on my couch to watch movies. Salt had never ac­tu­ally put his arms around me or cuddled me—we hadn’t got­ten that phys­ical un­til our time at the In­sti­tute—but we al­ways sat close, our thighs touch­ing. And some­times when the movie was long or I was tired, I would lean my head on his broad shoulder and just rest there. Once or twice I even fell asleep and only woke up when Salt was tuck­ing an afghan around me to keep me warm.

I would never be able to do that again, I real­ized. Never be able to draw com­fort from hav­ing his big, warm body so close to mine. We were never go­ing to have an­other movie night and I was never go­ing to fall asleep with my head against his shoulder. We would never— Get over it, I ad­vised my­self roughly. He doesn’t want you any­more. And can you blame him? Look how needy you let your­self get at the In­sti­tute. Look at all the weird things you did to­gether. Salt was prob­ably just act­ing but not you, Sug­ar­baker—no, you got into it. Deep into it. You liked be­ing a Little—play­ing the Baby­girl to Salt’s Papa. He prob­ably knows that and it dis­gusts him. You drove him away your­self by be­ing too damn needy and strange so don’t start moon­ing over him now. Just be­cause he’s sit­ting on your couch right now doesn’t mean he’ll ever want you back as a part­ner or any­thing else. He’s already gone.