Christ, she had fuck-all clue what to do with any of this.

“Say something,” Casey prompted after a minute’s silence. “You’re making me nervous.”

“You . . . But all of this is over, right?”

“Yeah, I’d say so.”

Her eyes widened. “You’d say so?” She’d heard him on the phone with someone, that night when they’d first kissed. His so-called partner, maybe. He’d told that person to fuck off, in no uncertain terms.

“I’d been on the fence about one final job, but I never agreed to it. So yes, it’s over.”

“You said you’d gone straight.” Hadn’t he? Or had she merely assumed? “You said you wanted to be a better man, from now on.” Because of me. Because of us.

“The bar’s nearly cleaned me out. I can pay my rent, keep food in the fridge and gas in my car, but there’s other things I need a little padding for. One night’s work, thirty thousand bucks. There’s a lot of good I can do with that kind of money.”

“But the money itself is bad,” she spat, catching how hysterical she now sounded, and not caring. “And the bar is full of that same bad money.” How on earth could it possibly succeed, when it was built on a pile of dirty cash? “Does Duncan know about all this? About how you made the money you used to go into business with him?”

Casey shook his head. “He knows it was shady, but he never asked for the details.”

She wished she didn’t know those details herself . . . But she had to, didn’t she? Without them, she’d been falling in love with a stranger. With a man as bad as James had been. Maybe the bad that James did left marks on people’s bodies, and bullet holes, and maybe he didn’t apologize for those things. But he’d never taken pleasure from his job, she didn’t think. Whereas Casey . . .

“Did you enjoy it?” she asked. “Those jobs?”

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t.”

She stared down at his hands for a long time, more than a minute. Hands that had held her baby—the hands that had held her before any other person in the world. Hands that had made Abilene feel wonderful in ways she’d all but forgotten about. And hands that had struck matches and started fires, counted money, but in all likelihood never come together to pray for forgiveness.

“Say something, honey.” There was worry in his voice, the excitement she’d sensed all drained away.

“I don’t really know what to say. I’m not even sure what I think just now.” All she knew for sure was that this changed everything.

“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.”