Page 43 of Silver Lining (The Diamond Trilogy 3)
Tonight has lasted forever, and when he says this, it stops some essential function of my brain. The news breaks tonight.
Holly’s brain still works.
“Elijah is exonerated?” She takes one tiny step toward Liam, like she can only believe him if she’s standing close enough. “We’ll both be exonerated? We’ll be free?”
“Yes.” Liam sighs, and for the first time I can see the toll this has taken on him. He’s all serious looks and expensive suits in his regular life. Right now, his face slips into an expression so familiar it makes my chest ache. “All the details have been leaked to the public. There are a few things left to be declassified, but that’s happening now. Right now.”
I don’t know what to say.
My skin doesn’t feel like my own skin. My body belongs to someone else. For so many years, I’ve been running and hiding and putting myself in the darkest corners of the world. I thought I would always stay there. Until Holly, I thought that’s where I belonged.
After Holly, I knew there was no way out. Resurfacing was too dangerous for me, and it almost killed her. What Liam is saying now—
It means I could have a life.
A million futures spring into being in front of my eyes. They’re wild fantasies, and they only have two things in common: Holly by my side and the oldest possible jealousy.
Through an accident of birth order I was the last one left at home with my father.
Not a day has gone by when I haven’t resented my brothers for leaving. And worse—for staying together when I was alone.
Now they all work together in the same place. Meanwhile I’m as unemployed as a person can be. And yes, I do want a vacation. I do want some cottage on a lake with Holly. I do want to hear the reeds in the lake while we lay on the sand.
But I can’t be that person forever.
“You have options,” Liam says into the cavern of my thoughts. At first he sounds far away, like he’s calling down to me from the top of the well. “Take your time with it.”
My mouth feels dry. “Options.”
“Are you thinking of coming back to North Security?”
“Do you want me to?”
Wanting hits me at the speed of a bullet. It hits all the sensitive parts of me. All the cracks in the armor I’ve worn all my life. All of it crumbles like weak concrete. It’s payback for the years I spent denying that this jealousy and need existed. It’s a good thing Holly’s standing next to me, because if she weren’t, I think I’d fall to my knees on her apartment floor.
I want it so much.
I want it second only to wanting her.
It makes me a different man, a better man, when I work for my brothers. And with them. They’re proof positive that a person can climb out of a dark pit and make a life for themselves that’s not all mayhem and guilt.
Some mayhem, sure.
That comes with the territory when you work in security.
But there’s more.
It’s pure instinct to deny it to him right now, even with Holly’s arm tight around my waist and the question hanging freely between us. No is on the tip of my tongue. But Liam didn’t ask me if I felt worthy of the job, of my place in the family. In some ways I still don’t. In some ways I never will. He asked me if I wanted it.
Not just for me, but so that I can be good enough for Holly. She followed her sister to France out of love. She’s not the type of woman who wants a life on the run.
“Yes,” I tell Liam.
He nods. “Okay. Call me when you’re ready to start.”
Then he leaves, pausing only to clap me on the shoulder. It hurts like a motherfucker. It also feels fucking amazing. We aren’t exactly huggers. Our family didn’t grow up with love and cookies. We had sucker punches and dark wells, but this feels like a start. It feels like a home.
Silence pulls itself over the apartment like a clean sheet. Holly traces the inside of my wrist with her fingertips and takes my hand in hers. The radiator kicks on.
It’s the most normal thing I think I’ve ever experienced with Holly. In another life we could be coming back from a fundraiser that we went to because we wanted to help people, not because she was trying to save me from the clutches of a corrupt government. She’d look just as beautiful in that dress, and I’d look less like a torture victim. It wouldn’t hurt to think about taking off my suit jacket. It wouldn’t hurt at all.
That other life is like a ghost, visible from the corner of my eye but only real so long as I don’t look straight at it.
