The Defiant Hero (58 page)
Locke nodded, too. “Good,” she said. “Thank you.” She backed away from him. “I’m going to . . . go find Jules and . . .” Her voice trailed off as she looked at him. He looked even more green than he did before. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Perfect,” he said. “I’m abso-fucking-lutely perfect.”
“See you around, then,” she said.
“Right. Later.” His soft laughter followed her as she walked away.
The sun had been up for hours before Meg came out of the room in the safe house where Amy was sleeping.
“I’m going to sleep in there,” she told Nils. “I hope you don’t mind. I just . . . I need to be with her for a while.”
He nodded. “I didn’t expect anything less.”
She sat next to him on the couch, slipping into his arms as if she belonged there.
“Okay,” he said.
She looked up at him. “Okay?”
He nodded. “I’m ready.”
She put her hand directly on top of him. “Hmm,” she said, “that can’t be what you mean . . .”
Nils laughed and moved her hand. He kissed her palm and placed it over his heart. “Don’t try to distract me. This is hard—I mean, difficult—enough, Ms. Dirty Mind.”
She kissed him sweetly then pulled back to gaze into his eyes. “John, you don’t have to do this right now.”
He shook his head. “I’ve got something I need to ask you, but before I can do that, I have to talk to you about a couple things. You know, about tonight—”
“Ah,” Meg said. “I was wondering when we were going to talk about what you had to do tonight to save my life. Are you okay?”
“Actually, it’s not an issue for me,” he told her. “But I thought the fact that it wasn’t might be an issue for you. I eliminated two targets tonight. To be honest, I don’t think about them as people. I know that probably sounds cold to you, but . . . I don’t gain anything by giving names and homes and families to terrorists. They were threats, Meg. To you and to me. And I took them out. It was fast, it was clean, and if I’d only wounded them, they would have kept shooting until one of us was dead. I did what I had to do and I refuse to feel bad about it.”
“Really?” she asked.
“After something like this happens, I have to go in for a required number of sessions with a shrink,” he explained. “He seems convinced I’m doing okay—at least for a guy who’s a liar, a killer, and a thief.”
“Liar, killer, and thief I can handle. What I’m having trouble with is the fact that you never taught me to say shit in Kazbekistani.”
He laughed. “Sorry about that. She asked, and . . . well, I told her.”
She leaned her head back against his shoulder. “You’re forgiven. I’m feeling very forgiving today.”
Nils took that as his cue. “When I was fifteen,” he told her, “my father got a job working as a janitor at Milfield Academy.”
“He was the janitor. Suddenly it all makes sense.”
“He was treated like crap by all those rich kids,” Nils said. “He hated it, I know he did, but he wouldn’t quit. He said it was good, honest work and there was no shame in that. But you see, part of his salary was my tuition. He was doing it for me.”
She was listening, so he kept going, telling her things he’d never told anyone. Things he’d never managed to forget. Things he’d tried for years to keep hidden. Things he didn’t want to hide from her. Not anymore.
“So I went there—this poor-as-shit kid, jammed in with all those rich assholes. And it got to me, Meg. What they did and what they said and what they thought. It started to matter. And I . . .” He choked it out. “I pretended I wasn’t related to that weird old janitor who shuffled around the campus. God forbid anyone find out he was my father. Yeah, even though I wasn’t rich, I got the asshole part down pretty well, pretty fast.”
Meg took his hand and interlaced their fingers. “I did some terrible things in high school, too, John. Nobody judges other people on that kind of ancient history.”
“I judge myself,” he told her. “I live, every day, with the memory of the look in my father’s eyes . . . It was the afternoon I got the highest score on some test—I don’t even remember what it was anymore. All I remember was that I was a freshman, and I got the best grade in the school—it was posted for everyone to see. And, Jesus, he was so proud of me. He waited for me outside of one of my classes after he got the news. I saw him there—he knew I saw him. And I walked right past him without even saying a word. I didn’t want to stop and acknowledge him in front of my friends.” Just thinking about it still brought tears to his eyes. “From that day on, he never approached me during school. Never again.”
Nils shook his head. “I swear to God, Meg, until the day I die, I will never forget the look on that man’s face as I walked away. He was a good man. He was one of the most honest, intelligent, kindest people I’ve ever known.”
“Yet he drank.” Meg sat up, kneeling on the couch to face him.
“That doesn’t make him a bad person,” Nils told her. “He was a good person who made mistakes.”
She was looking at him with those eyes that could see right through him, past all the bullshit and pretense, right to his heart and soul. “Why can’t you cut yourself the same slack?”
Nils nodded. “That’s what I’m trying to do—what I’m hoping you’ll do. Cut me some slack and . . .” He laughed. “I don’t know how to do this, how to say it, so I’ll try to imagine what my father would’ve done, okay?”
He got down on the floor, in front of her, on one knee.
Meg laughed. “Oh, John . . .”
“Will you marry me?” he asked her. He couldn’t keep from laughing either. “I’m serious. I know I don’t look or sound it, but, Meg . . .” He lost himself in her eyes. “I want to spend my life with you.”
She smiled at him. “I like your father’s style. And I love your father’s son, despite all the mistakes he might’ve made.”
His heart leapt. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
She smiled into his eyes, and he knew he’d found the ultimate win-win scenario.
Nils kissed her, grabbing hold of his happily ever after. It had been a long time coming, and he was never going to let it—or Meg—go.
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