“I just told you something I didn’t want to tell you.”

“It’s too risky.”

Really mad now, hurt as well, Alice said, “And I didn’t take a risk?”

“Alice, you’re not understanding me. It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, it’s that I can’t tell you. You have to believe me, I would if I could.”

There was a pleading note in his voice, and hearing it caused the anger she was feeling toward him to vanish. “Tommy,” she said softly, “what is it? What’s going on here?”

He turned his eyes away from her, took a second to compose himself. When he turned them back, they were glassy, slightly red, but his voice was calmer, slower: “I know this is hard for you. I know you want to be in a normal, out-in-the-open relationship, not hiding in the shadows, but believe me when I tell you, the shadows are where we belong right now. It’s where we’re safe.”

“Safe from what? I haven’t noticed any menacing forces around me lately. I mean, apart from Mrs. Buckley.”

He gave her a weak smile. “That’s because you’re still new in town. You don’t know how to look.” He shook his head, sighed. “I should probably let you break up with me like you want to.”

She let out a cheerless laugh. “I don’t want to break up with you, Tommy. In fact, it’s pretty much the last thing I want to do.”

As if he didn’t hear her, “I should let you because I’m trouble. I’m bad news, Alice. That night, when Camilla died—”

At the mention of her dead stepsister’s name, Alice’s heart leapt, began beating wildly in her throat. “Yes?” she said breathlessly.

“It didn’t happen like everybody thinks it did.”

“What do you mean?”

His voice sinking to a miserable whisper, “I’ve already said too much. Please don’t make me say any more.”

The silence between them stretched. At last she said, “Okay. I won’t.”

He looked up at her, surprised, grateful. “You won’t?”

“No.”

“Why the change of heart?”

“Because I trust you,” she said, though she might have said, Because I love you, since it was at that exact moment that she realized she did.

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter

• SEVENTEEN •