I guess I was only considering it now because of what I had become.
A pesky problem.
One someone could pay to have disappear.
While I understood that Bellamy’s existence in the office was mostly because he could take down people Quin deemed too wicked to live, I was also not the naive girl I had once been. Not everyone was that upstanding, that moral. There were plenty of people who, for the right number of bills stuffed in a suitcase, would take anyone out of the world without pondering the right or wrongness of it.
Anyone like me.
I had known this plan was potentially dangerous when I signed up for it. But I guess I had figured it would be in a more traditional way. Handcuffs and jail time.
Not potential disappearance.
Not possible murder.
I needed to get back in that computer, get into that file, get what I needed.
Then get the hell back out.
I believed in the bigger picture, in sacrifices for the greater good, but I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to be sacrificed in such a literal way.
If I got what was needed, then, yes, technically, in the scales of life, the loss of my life would be worth it. But not if I never got that far. And maybe not to the people who loved me the most.
I was queasy the whole drive back to Lincoln’s at the idea of my parents and sister finding out that something that had happened to me.
And, as I was pulling into the garage, I couldn’t help but let my mind wander where it had been wandering a lot lately.
Toward Lincoln.
And how he might handle something happening to me. The guilt because he had been ‘on the case,’ and hadn’t brought in anyone else, hadn’t told people who loved me that I might be in trouble.
In a sick sort of way, I maybe even hoped he would grieve. Not because of a lost client. Not even because I was a former coworker. But because I had maybe started to mean something to him.
That was probably projection.
It just didn’t seem possible to me that he managed to spend his evenings with me, talking, laughing, cooking and cleaning side-by-side without something more than client or coworker feelings developing.
Especially a man like him. Always in need of female affection, having a soft place to land after a day of hard.
As I walked through the garage door and into the kitchen, I could feel the day melting off me, dripping off with each step I moved into his house. This place felt more like home than my own apartment lately, a place of warmth and companionship, things my life had been so wholly lacking for longer than I cared to think about.
As I went about making a more labor-intensive, hearty meal than usual, I decided to leave work at work, to go ahead and go through with my thoughts from earlier in the day before my mind got hijacked with darker, uglier things.
This house was no place for dark and ugly.
“That smells good,” Lincoln greeted me with a nose lifted, breathing in dinner’s potential. I was just dying for this same exact scene, just maybe him moving in behind me, wrapping his arms around my belly, leaning his head on my shoulder, and pressing a kiss into my neck.
Then instead of us talking about our days while food cooked, making the time pass by him bending me over the counter…
My sex clenched hard at the very idea, strengthening my determination to make sure we managed to get this relationship moving in that direction.
After dinner.
Because men were always a little lower on their defenses when their bellies were full, when they were feeling cared for and contented.
Then I would go through with my plan.
“You have to be open-minded,” I demanded, turning, trying to keep my eyes on his face when they were dying to wander.
There would be time for that later.
“I trust you, Gem,” he told me with that sincere smile of his as he ducked into the fridge to grab one of the blood orange sodas I had bought to replace the regular ones he usually kept there. He popped the top, took a long drag, then, misinterpreting my look that was decidedly of thirst–just not the literal kind–held out the can toward me.
And, well, I wasn’t going to pass up on that, was I?
“So what are you making me, sweetheart?” he asked, making my belly flutter a bit at the endearment, even if a part of me knew they were just throwaways, things he said to all women.
I was hoping that maybe, possibly, hopefully, I could get my very own endearment, one that he didn’t give to everyone else.
We would see.
“I am making lasagne, but there are some changes.”
“I’ve been pretty open to your changes so far.”
And hopefully to more changes later tonight.