Page 111 of Against The Tide

Since I overheard her conversation with Nora last night, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. The tormented look on her face and the sorrow in her voice. Now all I can imagine is how she would look if she found out the real circumstances around his passing.

“It’s a fact of the situation. You can’t change it. Nothing can.”

“She’ll have to live with that for the rest of her life, and I can’t let that happen.”

“But if Avery wants the truth…”

“She thinks she wants it, Rowan, but…” He’s looking at me as though I’m teeing up to drown his kittens. The reality is that he doesn’t understand how the detail would decimate her.

I promised Avery everything, and I’ll be dammed if I fail to protect her. Physically or emotionally.

“It’s your business, Doc, but you can’t protect her from the truth. At some point she’ll come to it on her own or someone will say something, and then she’ll be hurting because of the facts and your betrayal.”

“Do you know why it’s mandatory to anesthetize a convict before the lethal injection? You know why it’s law?” Rowan stands straighter, looking directly at me while he swills his glass over the green felt of the pool table. “It hurts beyond anything you can imagine. It burns through your veins, scorching and corroding until it reaches your heart. Sixty seconds of the most horrific pain anyone could ever fathom. They say it’s a minute, but for most it’s longer.”

The room falls silent, the atmosphere taking an even deeper dive. Vocalizing it all only serves to make me feel sick to my stomach. By all accounts Robert was a great man, and “someone took him out like a criminal.”

“And we’re going to find out who. We’ll make them pay.”

“It’s too late for your brand of justice, Rowan. Avery might be the strongest person I have ever known. I mean, even after everything she’s been through, she can still love with all she’s got…but this…this will destroy her.”

With a deep breath, he levels me with that serious look that tells me he understands. That’s the thing about Rowan—he’s straight down the line, but he’s also seen enough shit in this world to know that justice isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. There are situations in this world that are in a gray space, somewhere that in order for your actions to do good, they fall between right and wrong.

“It was a heart attack.” He nods. “That’s all she needs to know.”

“If she ever asks—if it ever comes up—I’ll tell her the reality of it, but not before then.”

Rowan opens his mouth to speak, but before he can say anything, he clears his throat and puts his usual funny-guy smile on his face. Something between a grin and a cocky smirk.

“What are you doing down here?” Callie comes down the stairs in a long, black dress that grazes the floor. And the fitted cut along with the platform heels she’s wearing make her look a helluva lot taller than usual.

I’m about to ask her if Avery’s ready, when she puffs up with her hands on her hips. “You had one job, Twilight. One fucking job.”

“I’m not spying on the sitter.”

“It was the only thing I asked you to do tonight.”

“Christ, you realize that you hired a White House–approved nanny, right?”

“One thing!”

“On top of all the running around your mother had me do. No, actually, Nora asked you to do it, so technically I was doing it for you. A thank-you would suffice, princess.”

Taking a few steps toward him, she growls, “Had you been doing the one thing I asked you, the two of you would’ve seen that Nora has done it again!”

Rowan grabs the cue, nodding to the pool table. “What has your mother done now?” he asks while she snatches the cue from him, and with one quick hit, Callie pots the black quickly followed by zigzagging the white from the bottom of the table to the top, bouncing it off the sides with one hard hit before it goes straight into one of the top corner pockets.

“She’s invited Robert’s attorney for pre-gala drinks. And now Avery’s about to come down to an ambush she really could do without.”

“Pre-what now?” Rowan asks, shaking his head as he takes the cue from her and follows her up the stairs.

“Exactly, she’s being overbearing as always. She’s doing to Avery what she does to Rafe because she knows they won’t tell her to back off.”

Callie doesn’t stop her tirade until we get to the study, and Avery is already standing there. With her hair swept over one shoulder, her pretty face is completely exposed. And there’s nothing but calm. A small smile upturns the corners of her peachy glossed lips when she turns to me.

I’ve never seen anything so damn breathtaking in my life. The emerald green of her dress brings out the golden tinge in her creamy skin along with the natural light chestnut and caramel streaks in her hair. And while it has a plunging neckline all the way down to the top of her waist, she looks so demure and elegant with the way the long sleeves accentuate her slender arms and petite shoulders. When she takes a step toward me, the full skirt parts, revealing the slit that shows off her long legs, all the way to the top of her thigh.

I can’t quite understand how I got so lucky. Especially given all the shit I’ve done in my life. Our glances catch, and she gives me an apologetic look.