My eyes met Nolan’s, empty and lost. “I’m never going to get over him.”
With grief as my constant companion and little interest in anything else, I had begun to dig up every aspect of Lucian’s life that I could find, savoring those little details like they were the only thing that mattered. I guess now, in a way, they were.
My life had drifted from a routine that felt linear and logical into something I didn’t know how to pilot. I was no longer on the course Lucian set for me. Now, I was left to set my own course, and I didn’t know what to do with myself.
Kate offered several times to help me apply to colleges or seek apprenticeships or just talk about what direction my life should go over coffee. She thought it would be helpful for my grief if I had something else to occupy my mind, but the truth was, nothing could draw my attention away from the life of Lucian West.
Day and night, I scoured through the history of his cases. At least, whatever I could access publicly. I’d read all the transcripts and got lost in the news articles detailing both sides. There were times when I found myself attempting to be a keyboard warrior, defending him online to all the trolls who called him names and didn’t know a thing about him. But that became as fruitless as it sounded, and in the end, I realized I needed to do something bigger. I wanted the world to know who Lucian was, and it set into motion the only thing I’d ever done that had given me purpose.
When Birdie first saw me getting dressed and brushing my hair, she was excited. She offered to take me to coffee or shopping or the spa. All the things we used to do together. And I was a little sorry when her face fell because I refused her, but I explained that I had important things to do.
She thought I was going insane, sitting in front of the computer all day staring at the screen like a zombie. But I was processing every word I read and furiously scribbling notes. Those notes weren’t enough. I needed to hear from the people Lucian helped. I needed to hear from those he had changed.
It wasn’t easy. At first, I was hesitant given the fact that many of his clients had witnessed my epic meltdown at his service, followed by the ash-napping incident. But regardless, I couldn’t allow my humiliation to hold me back.
There was the small matter of getting over my nerves as well. Many of Lucian’s clients were somewhat scary looking at first glance. Bikers. Footballers. There was even a professional fighter who had to be inching seven feet tall.
But when I sat down across from them and asked them to tell me about Lucian in their own words, I realized something. They were just men. Men who worked hard and wanted to live their lives in peace away from judgment and stereotypes.
In a short time, they painted a picture for me of something that was very clearly wrong with our justice system. The notion that bias was alive and well, and that one man had the balls to fight for them when everyone else was ready to stone them. I knew it already, but hearing it from them was profound in a way I didn’t expect.
Lucian West was a real-life hero, and if I didn’t already know it, the proof was in these furiously scribbled page notes.
“EVERYTHING OKAY IN HERE?” BIRDIE asked as she popped her head into the bedroom.
It had been three months, and she still came to check on me every night before I went to bed. She worried about me far too much, and a part of me felt guilty that she had to worry about me at all.
“I’m okay,” I told her, and I meant it.
The days were long and exhausting, and I still missed Lucian a thousand times every second. But there was one thing I’d never be able to change, no matter how long my grief might last. The world went on, regardless of the day mine ended.
And soon, things would be changing again. I was fat and pregnant now. Wildly uncomfortable to the point that everything ached, and I was only five months along. But the baby was growing and kicking and healthy, and he would be here soon. I would need to set my pain aside because I was all he had.
“Are you really not going to find out the sex?” Birdie asked as I slathered my belly in cocoa butter.
“I don’t need to,” I told her. “I already know.”
“The gypsy blood,” she teased.
Birdie smirked and accepted that I was just crazy because I’d already been buying everything in blue. If it did turn out to be a girl, we were in trouble, but somehow, I just knew it wasn’t.