What was wrong with me?”

“What was wrong with you?” he asked.

My head jerked like he smacked me in the face.

Then I started struggling. “Get off me, I’m going home!” He caught my wrists and held them over my head.

“Answer my question, what was wrong with you? Why were you with him?”

“I thought he loved me!” I shouted. “He promised me everything. He was ful of grand dreams. He was going to show me the f**king world. I was young and stupid and believed him.”

“So, you’re sayin’ that you’re stupid because you believed a pack of lies some shithead fed you?”

“Yes!”

“It’s you who’s wrong in this scenario, just because you loved someone and since you did you trusted him to tel you the truth?”

I blinked in the darkness.

I hadn’t thought of it that way.

“That’s what love’s al about, Roxanne. You love someone, you trust them always to tel you the truth.”

“Hank, please, get off me,” I begged.

“Did he get you to deal drugs?” Hank asked.

“What? ” I screeched.

“Did you deal drugs with him? That’s what he did. He was a drug dealer. Smack.”

For some reason, the last word he said jarred me out of the moment and I became confused.

“What’s smack?” I asked.

I could almost hear Hank’s teeth grinding.

“Jesus. You don’t even know what it is. How in the f**k can you think you’re gray?”

Then it hit me.

“Oh… smack.” I said with dawning understanding.

“What is it?” Hank asked.

“Drugs,” I answered.

“What kind of drugs?” he persevered.

I thought about it, trying to remember what they were referring to on the TV cop shows when they mentioned it. I didn’t want to sound uncool that I didn’t know what it was but I kinda didn’t.

For some reason, as I was silent and trying to think, Hank’s body started moving like he was laughing. His hands loosened from my wrists and he buried his face in my neck.

“Sunshine, you’re a nut.”

Yes, definitely laughing.

“Are you laughing?” I asked just to check.

He rol ed off me, to his side, but took me with him, his arms locking around me.

“Smack is heroin,” Hank’s voice stil sounded amused.

“Oh God. Sid Vicious died of an overdose of that,” I told him.

“Yeah, a lot of people die of overdoses of that.” It took me a moment to realize that our conversation had taken a drastic, and very weird, turn.

I felt it important to keep on target.

“I don’t deal drugs, Hank. I design websites.”

“I know,” he replied and lifted a hand to run his fingers through my hair at the side of my head, then he tucked it behind my ear before his arm locked around me again.

“Roxie, people in six different states have been bringing up your name and no one knows who the f**k you are. On my desk, I got copies of employment records, apartment leases, phone bil s and credit card statements a mile high with your name on them. I can track your life for the last four years and none of it was even a little shady. Whatever Flynn did, he protected you from it. Every piece of paper and every report that comes in shows you’re as pure as snow.

You’re about as gray as the North Pole.”

Oh… my… God.

“You checked up on me?” I asked, horrified.

“I checked up on Flynn. Doing that meant I had to check on you since the only thing we got, except arrest reports and his name linked to various pieces of scum, is the trail he left through you.”

I tried to process that but Hank interrupted my processing by asking, “Did you know he was dealing drugs?”

I closed my eyes in despair.

Here we go, I thought.

I took a deep breath. Then, I admitted, “I had no idea. At first I didn’t care. Then, I knew he wasn’t out al day doing good deeds but I didn’t ask questions. I just didn’t want to know.”

I thought that said a lot about me and none of it was good.

Hank said quietly, “You’ve just proved my point, Sunshine.”

“What point?”

“You didn’t work with him, you didn’t even know what he was about. The only thing you did was fal in love with an ass**le. He lied to you and you believed him because you loved him. It’s easier for other people to see what kind of guy he was. They didn’t care about him, they only cared about you. You haven’t lived a life of crime, you just lived with a criminal who lied to you about who he was. Al this time, you’ve been living a normal life, Roxie. You aren’t to blame for letting the wrong guy into your heart.” I didn’t say anything because there was nothing to say.

Except he was wrong.

He just didn’t get it.

I didn’t want a cop boyfriend who was forced to run checks on my old leases and phone bil s to track down an ex-lover on the run. It was humiliating, pure and simple.

When I was silent, Hank kept talking.

“Roxie, it would be different if you let him stay in your heart. But you didn’t do that. Eddie told me that you tried to turn him out years ago. You were a woman alone doing the best she could, but, Sweetheart, you’re not alone now.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I said, and al of a sudden I didn’t. Not that I wanted to talk about it before, just that, since we were, I didn’t want to do it anymore. I was exhausted; it felt like I’d run a hundred miles without even an energy bar to see me through.

His hands moved to stroke my back. “Al right, Sunshine, we won’t talk about it anymore.”

His fingers trailed soothingly up and down my back.

Honestly, it was too much. I couldn’t cope.

He was such a good guy and there just seemed nothing I could say to get him to back off and leave me be.

It didn’t matter that I didn’t actual y want him to back off and leave me be.

It was about me caring about him so much that I wanted him to have something better than me.

I prepared to move. “I think I need to be alone. I’m going to go sleep on the couch.”

His fingers stopped moving and his hands pressed against my back.

“No you aren’t.”

“Please, Hank. I need to be alone. I have to think.”

“That’s the last thing you have to do.”

“Real y Hank –”