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“My attitude, believe it or not. See, for a while there, I didn’t think I could get out of that without you. Didn’t think I could make it through without you, either. I wasted a whole lot of time waiting for your big beautiful brain to show me something I wasn’t seeing, but you weren’t talking.” He shuffled around a little bit, the way he used to when he was proud of something and knew he shouldn’t be.

“So I stopped waiting. I accepted my fate. I was going to be in there forever, alone, without you to help me, without Hunter to goad me into anything. I made alliances. Did the work I was given. Kept my head down.”

“Sounds awful for you.”

“Eh—it wasn’t ideal.” His mild tone hid a world of pain. I knew him too well. It made me wince.

“So what then?”

“Then I got bored. I started thinking. I started looking at my real options, got out of my feelings, and started thinking about you. Your silence specifically.”

A burst of fury shot through me again and I opened my mouth indignantly. He held up a hand before I could say anything, which only made me angrier. Too angry to speak, which meant he won anyway. Damn it.

“And I figured there were two options. Either you’d swallowed the story that I’d killed Hunter—”

“I didn’t! I made every excuse for you, Kash. I argued for you. I got in fights over you. I told everybody who would listen that you didn’t do that, you would never do that. I told them that you’d send me a letter the second you could that would explain everything. I was so sure! I was cocky! And I made a goddamn fool of myself when you never wrote.”

Relief flooded his eyes and his arrogant mouth softened.

“I knew I could—”

“But then! Then!” He couldn’t shut me up now. The dam had burst. “You never wrote. People started pitying me, Kash. Pity! They called me a poor, stupid girl, talked about how I was going to end up a crazy cat lady wearing a tinfoil hat and living in my parents’ dilapidated trailer forever, how I was living in denial—they told me I needed therapy! I almost didn’t get the job at the library because the hiring manager was convinced that I was only there to research laws and loopholes to get you out.”

“But you did get it—”

“And you want to know the worst part? He was right. My very first lunch break, I started reading every law book I could get my hands on, every forensic textbook, everything!” My throat tightened, but I refused to cry. My voice sounded hoarse and alien. “After a while I had to face the facts. Even if you were innocent—which I still believed, somehow—you weren’t interested in telling me so. You were content to leave me in the dark.”

“That wasn’t—”

“I’m not finished! So I stopped looking up laws and codes and started in on psychology. Borderline personality disorder. Codependency. Trauma. Anything to explain why, in the face of all that evidence, I was still desperate for you to come home. Why, when you were locked behind bars for killing Hunter, I still couldn’t wrap my head around believing that you’d done it. Because, you know, only a crazy person would try to free the man who possibly killed her brother. Only a crazy person wouldn’t want to point fingers at anyone, at everyone, even if that someone was you.” I couldn’t fight the tears anymore and they ran down my face in a flood. I scrubbed them off, furious that they’d given me away. I turned my back to him. There was nothing left to say, and I still had some pride left.

Long moments passed and he didn’t say anything. I could feel him behind me, a ball of contained energy that I couldn’t read. Damn it, I shouldn’t have to try to read him at all. He was the one on trial here, not me. Literally.

“I love you too,” he said softly.

I whirled on him. “What?”

He shrugged and took half a step toward me. “You don’t need a psychologist to tell you why you kept waiting, Daisy. Or hoping. It’s the same reason I did. You love me. I love you, too.”

“Oh, screw off,” I hissed. Sniffles obscured the intended vitriol.

“Can I ask you something?”

I sniffed again. “What, Kash?”

He bobs his head from side to side, as though weighing the words. “How did your dad react?”

I think my brain must have short-circuited for a minute. I stared at him wide-eyed. “To what?”

“My arrest.”

I frowned. “Same way he reacts to everything. He drank. Told us he knew all along that you were bad news. Drank some more. Almost lost his job until his boss made him go on FMLA. Got real protective.”

“How protective?”

I shifted my weight, frustrated at the conversation. “Super protective! Wouldn’t let me or mom leave the house for months. Literally wouldn’t even let me take out the trash or walk to—” Oh, no. The realization struck me like iced lightening to my gut. “—the mailbox.”

Kash nodded slowly, his face a blank mask. He waited patiently.