Page 82 of In Lies We Trust

“Are any of the others testifying?”

She looked at her lap. “One is willing if there are multiples. Another said no. I haven’t spoken to the others, but—”

“Okay.” I held up a hand to stop her. “I appreciate you coming to me. I need some time to think, though,” I told her. Disappointment flickered across her face, but she was gracious, rising and extending a hand.“It’s not a decision I can make lightly.”

“Of course,” she said. “I’d like to leave you with this.” She placed a manila envelope on the table between us. “It’s everything I found on him, on the other women. We’re staying at the Bourbon Hotel until tomorrow. Maybe take a look at it and…just give me a call and let me know where your head is?”

I nodded. “Absolutely. Thanks for this. I just… I need to figure out if I really want to go back there, you know?”

She squeezed my hand. “I do know. And I will respect your decision, regardless.” She walked toward the door, her lawyer following, and stopped to glance back at me. “But I really, really want to put this man behind bars. Make him pay for what he did to us.”

“That’s the only reason I’m even considering it,” I tell her honestly. With a small, sad twist of her lips, she left.

Brodie came to stand behind me as I stood at the window and watched them leave. He wrapped his arms around me, his hands splaying out across my belly, and I leaned back into his chest. He didn’t say anything right away; there was no need. He had always been good at reading me.

“Where’s Saoirse?” I asked.

“With her grandma.”

I twisted to look at him. “Take me for a ride?”

“It would be my pleasure,macushla.”

The thing about riding a motorcycle was that you couldn’t talk. There was nothing to listen to except the wind in your face and the road beneath the wheels. Iclung to Brodie, my arms wrapped around his waist and my thighs bracketing his. Beneath the hands I’d slipped inside his jacket his stomach flexed and rippled as he controlled the machine between his legs, a reminder of how it felt when he moved against me in the night. Every now and then he placed a warm palm over the top of my hand, pressing it more securely against him. When I stroked a hand along the vee leading into his pants he sucked in a breath and shuddered. He gave me a warning squeeze before shifting his hand back to the handlebars.

I grinned. I loved these times between us, where we communicated with a touch and a breath. When he had returned from Ireland, we had gotten into the habit of riding at least once a week. He’d wanted to buy me my own bike, but I liked being pressed up against him too much. Each ride was a prolonged hug, something I’d experienced far too few of growing up.

I wanted every hug I could get.

I needed to look at that file when we returned, reopen myself to the horror of my experience, because it was the right thing to do. I had been foolish not to report it years ago.

We navigated the curving, hilly road for a bit over thirty minutes, stopping once at an overlook to sit and admire the mountain vista. He plucked me up and into his lap astride his thighs, and I nuzzled into him, my cheek against his chest as we breathed in the view.

“You don’t need to do this,” he murmured.

I looked up at him, still in awe at how well he read me. “I do, though. How is it you know before I do that I’m going to?”

“Because the injustice of not doing it will haunt you. You’re already making plans on how to achieve the least amount of collateral damage.”

“I hate to pull us back there. We’d both done so well, moved on.”

“I know, baby.” He kissed me, one of those long, drugging kisses that left me feeling dazed. “The fact that you’re even considering it is why I love you. So fucking much.”

“I have the recording. I think what I’ll do is give it to Kennon and her lawyer, let them use it however they can, and I’ll testify if it’s necessary.”

He nodded. “Easiest and most powerful thing you could do. And maybe they can use it to open an investigation into Michael’s death.”

“We’ll have to find a way to keep it away from Saoirse. I don’t want any of this ugliness touching her.”

“Goes without saying.”

“Okay, then. It’s decided.”

“Okay.”

We held each other for a few minutes longer, and then we turned and headed back home. I would call Kennon tonight, I decided, and take the necessary steps to put all of this truly, finally in the past.

It was the least I could do, both for myself and every other woman who had been hurt by the general’s son.

I would do this last small thing, and then we would live, unburdened by our baggage and our trauma. Free.

THEEND