“Tell me what you’re feeling, then.”
“I feel . . . disappointed. And a little disgusted, to be honest.” She looked up and met his eyes, finding more than worry there now. Pain. That might’ve been enough to have the old Abilene wanting to take it back, to soothe his hurt feelings, but fuck the old Abilene.
“Disgusted?”
“Yes,” she said, sitting up straight. “That you don’t sound, with hindsight, like . . . like, ‘Holy crap, I’m so lucky I never hurt anybody. Thank goodness I stopped when I did.’ Plus you didn’t stop, not completely. You were still thinking about doing it again.”
“I was, but I won’t now.”
She huffed, exasperated. “Because of how I’m taking it, you mean?”
He nodded. “I only wanted the money for you. To help you find a place, maybe take some classes. I can make a person’s entire salary in one night. Tax-free. And I’m not bragging, I’m just saying, that’s a lot of money, a lot of money that could do a lot of good. But it’s pretty clear you wouldn’t take it, knowing where it came from.”
She shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. Even if I sent it to an orphanage, how could it ever feel right? Nothing feels right now, knowing that. Knowing that’s where my wages are coming from. Knowing that’s how you paid for the groceries you’ve brought us, for everything you’ve ever given Mercy . . .” She sighed, shoulders trembling faintly, tears stinging.
Casey’s eyes were wide, his lips pursed. He looked scared, and she’d never seen such a thing before. Not like this. Scared with no ferocity behind it. Helpless.
“I still appreciate everything you’ve done,” she said. “I’m still grateful. But if I’d known then what I do now, I don’t think I could have accepted any of it. Not anymore.”
After a long, tense pause, he asked, “And so what does that mean for us?”
She shook her head, the gesture pure despair and uncertainty. “I don’t know.”
“I won’t do that last job. I promise you that.”
“But not for the right reasons. You’d turn it down now, but you . . . You were still going to do it.”
“I was thinking about it. And only to help you, like I said.”
She laughed softly, sadly. “That doesn’t make it okay. That doesn’t make you Robin Hood, Casey. That only makes you a criminal.”
He flinched as though she’d struck him.
“You’re still a good man, in a lot of ways.”
“But not good enough?”
She shook her head, her heart breaking to realize it was true. Here she was again, falling for a bad man.
“Could I ever be good enough?” His expression doubled all that hurt in her chest.
She sighed again, the sound venting every bit of confusion and frustration weighing on her. “You don’t regret it,” she said. “You don’t feel bad for what you’ve done.” It was James all over again, only hidden behind an easy smile, instead of a stern scowl. A con man, indeed.
“I do now,” he said softly.
“But—”
“I know, I get it. Not for the right reasons.”
“Why doesn’t that terrify you?” she demanded, barely recognizing her own voice. “Thinking about how easily you could have cost someone their life, and all for some money?” Abilene was no angel, but she’d only ever gambled with her own safety. She refused to fall back on victimhood now, but she’d never been the villain, she didn’t think. She may have used men, but not a one of them hadn’t been anything less than willing to take the implicit trade-off. Well, none except James. He’d fought her. Failed in the end, but fought, and none of the others had.
“I guess I never thought about it that deeply,” Casey said, seeming to tease the truth out as he spoke. “I suppose maybe I couldn’t have thought that hard about it, not without second-guessing myself. Losing my nerve.”
“You make it sound like a game.”
“I can only be honest with you, and say that yeah, that’s exactly what it felt like to me.”
“Are you . . . Are you proud of that stuff?”
A long and loaded breath seemed to inflate then collapse his posture. “I was. Not so much recently—not since I met you, and wished I could tell you I’d been something better than a con artist for the past decade. But yeah, in the moment, I was proud of it. Not because I was getting away with something, and not because of the money, even. But I was proud I’d never been caught. Proud that not a single one of those fires had ever been deemed arson. Proud, because I’d never been so good at something in my entire life. Better than anybody else I knew, anybody else on the planet, I hoped.”
He called it talent, perhaps, but it struck her as no better than blind luck.
Still, this wasn’t a debate they were having, but an airing of secrets. I’d always assumed it would have been mine that came between us. She’d assumed she could have forgiven this man anything short of violence. But in the end, it wasn’t even the recklessness of his crimes that disturbed her most. It was his lack of remorse.
He spoke. “You can’t see me anymore.” It was a statement, not a question.
“No, I can’t.” Her voice hitched and she couldn’t meet his eyes. “Not like I have been, this past week.”
“I hope you can still work for me and Duncan, at least.”
For now, she had little choice. Fortuity wasn’t rolling in jobs, and Mercy needed a roof, and heat, and food in her belly. “I’ll keep working for you. I don’t know how I feel about it all yet, but I still need to support myself.”
He nodded. “Good.”
“Will you tell Duncan now, where all that money came from?”
“If he asked, I might. If you told me it’d go some way to fixing this—us—then I would, yes.”
“I can’t say it would. But he seems like he respects the law. You might owe him that much.”
Casey nodded. “Maybe.”
They fell silent for a long time, and in those minutes their breath lengthened, as did the shadows as the sun dipped closer to the hills.
“I got you something,” Casey said, shattering the stillness. “I didn’t buy it with dirty money, either—I bought it after I cashed my paycheck. Can I give it to you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You don’t ever have to open it, if you don’t want to.” He stood. He reached into his front pocket and took out a little wad of red tissue paper and set it in her palm. “You can open it now, or next week, or never. But I want you to have it, either way. It’s just a tiny thing.”
She tucked it in her own pocket.
“Should I take you back?”
She nodded again. “Yeah. I’d like to get back before Mercy needs feeding.”
“Are we still friends?” he asked as they began the descent.
She considered it. She still wanted James in her life—strictly on her terms, but she valued him in significant ways. Like James, she valued Casey despite his mistakes. She couldn’t be with him, knowing what she did now, but neither did she hope never to see him again.
“I think so,” she finally said. “I need time to figure out how I feel about everything you’ve told me, but I hope we can be.”
A frail ghost of a smile passed his lips. “Me, too.”
And they didn’t speak again, not on the hike down, not on the ride back east, not a word until Abilene climbed off the bike.
“I’m gonna go and check on my mom,” Casey said. “But tell Miah I’ll be back later, just in case any more weird shit decides to go down around here.”
“I will.”
He held a thought in, lips pursed.
“What?” she prompted gently.
“Thanks. For listening, I mean, even if it wasn’t what you wanted to hear.”
She nodded. “Thanks for being honest . . . I won’t tell anybody, by the way. Rat you out, that is.”
“I think I already knew you wouldn’t, but thanks all the same.”
Her turn to pause, caught on a thought. “I never did tell you my own secrets,” she said at length. “If it’s any consolation, they might’ve had you second-guessing us right back.”