The Case for Jamie (Charlotte Holmes #3)(72)

“I was . . . I think the only way to describe it is wild.”

“Wild?”

As she spoke, she left long pauses between her sentences. “Or hungry. Like I’d been kept in a room for years, and given enough food and water to survive. Then I was brought out to a buffet, and there were all these people there who had been eating for years. I knew that I wasn’t one of them. I was hardly even a person. I was . . . I just wanted. I was starving, but it had made me sharp. The world was too soft, too complacent. I hated it for that.

“This isn’t right either. Maybe I was being held underwater. Maybe I held myself there. When I met you, I’d been thinking I was at the end of it all.” She drew her knees up to her chest. “The end of me, I suppose. I think it was true, that I was at the end of whatever that self was. But I had to go off and end it myself, do you understand? Alone. I wanted . . . by the time I saw you again, I wanted to have found my way back to a beginning.”

I didn’t understand her at all. I thought, I’ll never know anyone better than I know her.

“I’m sorry,” she said simply. Her dark hair fell down around her face. “I should have told you what I was planning. I panicked. August was dead, and everyone else had scattered, and there were weapons in play, and you weren’t safe. All I could think was, If I can get Watson to DI Green, he’ll be out of harm’s way. She’ll know what to do. I skipped all the other steps and went straight there. I get so impatient, but I was wrong, and I . . .”

“You let your brother walk.” I tried to keep my voice firm.

Holmes shook her head rapidly. “He would have walked anyway. You couldn’t arrest him, then. Maybe you still can’t. Not with his money, not with his team of lawyers. Milo got sued maybe twice a week. He had a crisis team on twenty-four-hour call, he would eat the Sussex constabulary for breakfast. And now—I don’t know. Maybe he’ll see justice for it.”

“I hope so. If not, there isn’t going to be anybody left to hold responsible,” I said. “For August.”

“There will be. I might have started this, but I’ll finish it with putting Lucien away. And even if he wasn’t the one to kill August, I’ll still consider that case closed. Maybe I’m the one responsible for him dying. But I was . . . I was a child, and I hadn’t been given a compass, and I made a terrible decision. I thought I’d get him fired from being my tutor. I don’t think that makes me responsible for his death. Maybe that makes me a bad person.” She straightened her shoulders “But I . . . I don’t think I am.”

“I don’t think you’re a bad person.”

“You did.”

“I don’t anymore,” I said, and found that I meant it.

“I want to be good,” she said. “I want to be good without being nice. Can I do that?”

I smiled, despite myself. “I like you best when you aren’t nice.”

I’d been holding out hard against the urge to touch her, but she turned to me now in a rush, buried her face against my neck. My arms went up and around her almost of their own accord.

“I hate this.” She wiped at her face with an angry hand. “All week I’ve been crying, and why? Over you? Over Lucien Moriarty?”

“I’m getting his blood all over your dress,” I told her. “I’d cry, too.”

“You’re not still dating that girl,” she said.

I raised my eyebrows. “That wasn’t a question.”

“You’re not wearing her scarf anymore.”

“When did you ever see me wear that scarf? In that stairwell?”

Her quicksilver smile. “I have my sources.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing all this time?” I asked, stroking her hair. “Watching me?”

“Would it be terrible if I had?”

I exhaled. “A little terrible.”

She pulled back to see my face. “You don’t think it’s terrible.”

“I don’t.”

“You think it’s kind of hot, actually.” That smile again, there and gone.

“Did you just say ‘kind of hot’? Who are you?”

“Most recently, I was a fashion vlogger,” she said, and then she kissed me, quickly, like an impulse, like an accident.

“Hey,” I said softly, pulling back.

She tugged at my collar. I felt her hand trace its way down, and she undid the top button, slowly, sliding it between her fingers. It was like this with her. Fits and starts. Nothing I could ever see coming.

I’d never thought we’d be here again.

“Holmes,” I said, reaching up to touch her hands, to fold them in mine.

“Do you forgive me?”

“You sound like you’re making some kind of decision,” I said, because she was scaring me a little.

“Do you?”

I paused, thinking. Not long ago, I’d wanted everything from her. For her to be my confidant, my general. My best and only friend. I wanted her to be the other half of me, like we together made a coin. She the king’s head to my tails. I loved her like you would the person you’d always wanted to be, and in return I would have followed her anywhere, excused any action, fought to keep her hoisted high on her throne.