ALL THINGS PRETTY PART TWO by M. Leighton Read Free Book Online

company in the tiny
cubicle of a prison cell somewhere.   What a cold comfort that will be!
    The door opens and I bolt upright.   My heart both leaps and shatters when I
see Sig slip into the room and close himself in with
me.   He stares at me with those
deep, dark eyes, eyes that fooled me.   Me, a streetwise, hardened bitch-of-a-girl.   A cop got the better of me.   And he did it with those eyes. And that
smile.
    “I hope you’re satisfied,” I snap bitterly, hating the
quaver in my voice, resenting the lump in my throat that I have to force the
words past.
    Sig doesn’t bother to hide how my words crush him.   That or he’s just pretending.   He’s good at that.   Really good.   Why he would need to pretend anything at this point, though, is
beyond me. Still, there’s no way I’d trust that what I see is real. No. Freakin ’. Way.
    “How could you even think that?   This is not at all how I wanted, how I expected things to turn out.   Surely you don’t think I did any of this
on purpose.”
    “Of course I do!   You’re a cop, for godssake .   Lying to catch people like me is what
you do.”
    “This was never about catching you .   It was always
about Tonin.   The only way I planned
for this to affect you was to free
you.   To free you and Travis
from whatever hold he had on you.”
    “Well, congratulations.   We’re free of him all right.   Free to spend our lives in misery, separated from each other.   Me rotting in prison,
Travis rotting in some kind of mental institution somewhere.”
    Sig walks to the table and slides into the chair across from
me.   He reaches over to lay one of
his hands on top of my balled fist.   His touch is oddly welcome, a realization that hits me like a face full
of fire.   I jerk away from him,
determined not to let him trick me into feeling anything other than disdain and
betrayal.  
    He looks stung, but says nothing. Just drags his hand back and claps it with his other on the table in front
of him. “I would never let that happen. And I hate that you think I would.”
    “Never let that happen?   How can you stop it?   It’s
over, Sig!” I rail. “The cat’s out of the bag and there’s nothing either of us
can do to put it back in.”
    I’m breathing hard, half-standing with my palms planted on
the table. Sig just watches me , hurt
playing over his features .   “Do you really think I could do that to you? That I would just let that
happen?”
    My butt thumps as I fall back into my chair, deflated.   “There’s nothing you can do about
it.   You’re a cop.   Putting bad guys away is what you do.   Besides, I’m sure this goes over your
head. Lance is a big bust and he’ll do whatever he has to in order to keep me
quiet and make me pay.   No, at this
point, there’s nothing anyone can do to save me.”   I glance down at my fingers, the edge of
one nail raw from where I’ve picked at it.   The anger, the vital emotion that’s keeping me upright and functional at
the moment, drains away, leaving me with nothing but sadness and hopelessness
and a strange hollow feeling.   “Some
part of me always wondered if I could ever
really get away with what I’ve done. I suppose after so long, I started to
believe that I could.   But life just
doesn’t work out that way.   Everybody
has to pay the piper. And now it’s my turn.”  
    For a few seconds, when I look up at Sig, I see him as he was .   I see the man who loved me with his
hands and his mouth and his body and his eyes. I see the man who cared about me.   The man I’ve fallen in love with.
    But then, like the flip of a switch, I see him as he is now.
I see him as someone who let me down when I needed him most and then left me
all alone.  
    That’s when the tears start again.   In earnest, sobs shaking my entire body
like the tremors of an earthquake. “Promise me you’ll see that they go easy on
Travis,” I bawl, my despair only worsening when I think of what’s