“What’s going on?” she whined in between heaves. “I’m. Too. Out. Of. Shape. For. This.”
“Just come on!” I navigated our way back through the walkways until the entrance to Rayfield Park edged into view.
Before we passed through the arch, Millie stopped and clutched at her sides like she had been punched in the stomach. “Stop,” she wheezed. “I need. A minute.”
“Can we please just keep going?”
“I think. My feet. Are bleeding.” She brushed her hair away from her face, which was glistening with a fresh sheen of sweat. “What’s going on. With you?”
Before I could answer with an explosion of everything I had just witnessed, someone grabbed onto my arm and yanked me away from her.
“Hey!” I protested as Nic pulled me into him.
“Whatever you’re about to say to Millie, don’t,” he urged in a voice so low only I could hear it. He tightened his hands around my wrists and held them against his. “Please.”
Behind us, Millie was noticing the sweat stains pooling out from under her arms and the bleeding along the straps of her sandals. “Gross,” she moaned as she sank to the grass, panting.
“You can’t tell me what I can and can’t tell my best friend,” I snapped, shaking him off me.
“You promised,” he said quietly. “That was supposed to mean something.”
“I promised when I thought you were an inactive member of the Mafia, which you clearly are not! This is completely different. I will not be bound by that!”
“Sophie,” he said, his voice full of strain. “I really need you to be quiet about what you just saw.”
I could feel my face growing hot with anger. I grabbed his shirt and pulled him around the side of the arch. “You lied to me!”
His hands shot up in surrender. “I didn’t lie, Sophie. I just … left out certain things. Let me explain.”
I shoved him. “You made me believe you were good!”
“I am good!”
“No, you’re not!” I shoved him again. “You made me think you were innocent. You made me believe you weren’t part of all that crazy Mafia stuff!”
Cautiously Nic removed my hands from his chest. “I never said that.”
“You had plenty of time to set the record straight.” I wanted to slap him. It took every ounce of my self-control to curl my hands by my sides instead.
“I know.”
“But you didn’t.”
Purpose and defiance flashed in his eyes. “I didn’t have enough time to explain everything. But I didn’t lie to you. Everything I said was true, just not in the way you might have taken it.”
“I asked you if you hurt people! You said no!”
He came closer. “I said it wasn’t like that. And it’s not. Everything I do is about protection.”
“Protection,” I scoffed. “Is that what you tell yourself when you put your gun in someone’s mouth?”
He pulled me into him. “Listen to me.”
“Don’t,” I cried, feeling the tears swarm behind my eyes. “I’m scared of you.”
He recoiled like I really had slapped him. “I told you I would never hurt you.”
“How do I know that?”
He stared at me so hard it took my breath away, and after an agonizing moment, he responded quietly, “Because you’re a good person.”
I glowered at him. “That makes one of us.”
“I’m a good person, too.”
“You just put a gun in Robbie Stenson’s mouth,” I hissed.
“I’m sorry you had to see that, but it was inevitable.”
“How is an assault like that inevitable?”
His eyes darkened, but he didn’t respond.
“You must know how totally unacceptable that was. I have to report it to the police.”
“Sophie, it was for you. How could I let him walk away from me after I found out what he tried to do to you?”
I backed away from him again. “Are you insane, Nic? You know you can’t just go around pulling guns on people for me. I can take care of myself!”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “That was a service to society. Stenson is the type of character who won’t stop at just one girl. It was everything I could do shy of actually blowing his head off.”
I gasped. “Can you not be so graphic?”
He scraped his hands through his hair. “Sorry.”
“I don’t think you are.”
He wasn’t looking at me anymore and I knew I was right. He wasn’t sorry; he was sorry I had seen it. “I know I have no right to ask anything of you,” he said, “but please don’t tell anyone about what you saw. It will make trouble.”
“No kidding. I witnessed a crime. And even if the victim was someone I hate, it still doesn’t make it right. I won’t keep it a secret. I won’t be your accomplice.”
“Then wait at least.” He grabbed my hands and closed his around them before I could pull them away. I tried to avoid his dark eyes. “Sophie, I’ll break the vow. I’ll tell you as much as I can,” he whispered urgently. “I need you to understand who I am. Please just give me the chance to show you.”
“It’s too late,” I said, but my resolve was as unsteady as my voice.
He moved my hand to his heart so I could feel it hammering in his chest. “I’m not a bad person. I know you can feel it. I admit I lied to you by letting you believe what you wanted to. I needed you to feel happy and secure, and I didn’t want to take that feeling away from you after everything you had discovered about our fathers. I’m not ashamed of who I am or where I come from, but I was afraid of you knowing about it and not giving me the chance to help you see what it really means. I was terrified that the truth would change the way you look at me. But you deserve it all, and I’ll give it to you if you’ll let me.”
My defiance was crumbling and we both knew it. I pulled my hands from him and folded them. I knew there had to be more answers, but I didn’t think he would admit it so freely after lying to me for so long. Now, the way he was convincing me was working — he was pushing all the right buttons. He had me right where he wanted me. I hated it and I burned for it.
“You get one chance.”