Nick leaves the room under Monroe's steady guidance, but Adalind can feel him fuming somewhere in the back of her head. Not his thoughts, just his emotions, running high with frustration and anger and just a hint of lust. It's a little like woging, she thinks. This connection. A little like he can't help but reveal himself to her when he's overwhelmed like this.
Monroe must be talking him down, because the anger fades and the frustration goes with it. The lust goes nowhere, but then it could be hers just as well as his. They'd gotten pretty hot for each other in his car. Well, they've been pretty hot for each other since they met, if she's going to be brutally honest with herself. It's always been there—this pull between them.
Curiosity. Danger. Desire. The law, and all the ways she knows how to thwart it.
She sighs and turns back to Ian, who's collapsed back onto Rosalee's stool at the table looking worn out and pale from blood loss.
"Tell me everything," she says, "starting with who shot you."
Ten minutes later, she heads into the front of the shop and finds Nick and Monroe in the middle of an intense conversation that stops abruptly the moment she walks in. As subterfuges go, it's not exactly groundbreaking, but Adalind pastes on her best professional smile and lets Nick pretend he wasn't just spilling his guts about her to Monroe.
"My client has been here all morning," she says. "When did your bartender die?"
"Four hours ago," Nick says, frowning.
"Then it wasn't Ian," she says.
"I could have told you that," Monroe says. "I've been helping Rosalee pull a bullet out of him for the past four hours."
"Sounds like he didn't even need your services then," Nick says, scowling at Adalind, and she crosses her arms and glares at him.
"Monroe, could we have the room?" she says, and Monroe says, "Yep, yep, yep," and skedaddles back into the rear room with barely a glance at Nick. It would have been wasted on Nick, anyway. He only has eyes for her, and even though she's annoyed with him, that makes her feel pretty good.
"All right," she says, "out with it."
"Out with what?" Nick says. "You stole my suspect, you interfered with my case, you endangered yourself and Rosalee by forcing me out of a room where you were facing a potential murderer, and oh yeah, you didn't get anything Monroe and Rosalee couldn't have already told me!"
He's shouting by the end of it, frustration and anger creeping back into the spot in her mind where his emotions live now, but Adalind is plenty frustrated herself, and she sends it all right back to him.
"You think I stepped in to screw with you? Really? After everything we've seen and done and been to each other in the past day—in the past six months—you think I just decided to fuck with you and your case for the fun of it?"
"Wouldn't be the first time," Nick mutters, sounding like a moody teenager, and Adalind has a sense of premonition. Their kid is going to be one hell of a teenager.
"Great," Adalind says, anger mounting, "that's just great. Then I guess I won't tell you about how defending Ian made him grateful and ready to trust me almost immediately. About how he told me everything he knows about the Verrat chasing him here and attempting to gain a foothold in Portland, and how he offered to use his Resistance contacts to track down a few mercenaries with the right morals to help defend us and our people for the next nine months while we're out of commission. About how he loves the idea of Switzerland if we can guarantee his people papers and safe passage, and how he thinks it's a great way to show the world what might be possible without the Royal's in power and thereby recruit folks to the cause. But you don't care about any of that, do you? Because I'm still the evil hexenbiest lawyer you can't trust and never will."
Nick stares at her, open-mouthed and not blinking, and she sighs and all the anger she's been holding on to rushes out of her, leaving her worn out and exhausted.
"This isn't going to work, is it?" she says. "You're never going to trust me, and I'm always going to be the villain, and you were never going to leave Juliette anyway. So let's just call it, Nick. Let's just go our separate ways."
"I think I might be falling in love with you," Nick says, and Adalind's stomach hits the floor while it's her turn to stand there with her mouth open, eyes wide.
"What?"
"Yeah," Nick says. "I mean, I can't be, right? But I think maybe I am, and I think maybe I want to have a baby with you, and I think maybe I want to trust you, even though you've tried to kill me and half of the people I know and love. So, I guess what I'm saying is, let's not call it. Not yet. Not until we know what this thing between us is going to be. Because I think it's going to be everything, and I'm not ready to give that up yet."
Adalind stares at him—at his stupid, stoic face—firm and sure—mulish, even—and his stupid, fathomless eyes—boring into hers like he's mining for gold—and she wonders where exactly he gets off, saying shit like that to her when he was trying to murder her only last night.
"Nick, we were trying to kill each other less than twenty-four hours ago."
"Yeah," he says, huffing a laugh and having the decency to look a little embarrassed, "and look how well that turned out. Trying to kill each other only brought us closer together. You and me—I think this is fate."
Adalind sways a little and closes her eyes to regain her balance.
Fate. Fucking fate.
Adalind's never really gone in for predestination. It's an odd position for a witch to take, but she's been a lawyer too long to believe that horrible things are destined to happen. Horrible things happen because people are people—humans who make choices that have consequences—or, if they hire her, as few consequences as possible. She doesn't believe in destiny or justice or fate. She believes in a law degree and a keen eye for spotting the loophole in any argument.
But for one moment, as Nick's warm palms slide around her arms to steady her, she wishes she could believe that loving him could be her fate.
"Stop," she says—croaks, really—looking up into his warm, dark eyes, "—don't say that. You don't mean it. Fate isn't real, Nick, and it's certainly not a reason to start a family together on the strength of one night of fucking and fighting and one day of arguing and making out in your car. We're not teenagers—we don't have to go steady—and you don't need to decide you love me just because you want to fuck me again. It's okay if we're just allies for now. It's okay if you don't trust me. You shouldn't trust me. I'm a bitch."
"Yeah," Nick says, a wry little smile curling on his lips. "You totally are." And then he kisses her anyway, and Adalind gives up. It may not be fate, but it sure is starting to feel like love.
Kissing Nick never gets old. He kisses her like he's on a mission. Like it's his job to make her tremble in his arms, and he means to see it through. It makes her a little lightheaded, the way he pulls her into him, flush again all that deadly muscle. He could kill her like this—put one hand around her neck and squeeze. She could kill him, too—grab his gun and pull the trigger before he even came up for air. They're both predators at heart—deadly and dangerous—and that makes it even sweeter, when he pulls back and cradles her face softly between his killer hands.
"This isn't over," he says. "I know we've got a lot to figure out before we decide to make this baby, but you and me—we're not done."
"Okay," she says, still a little dazed from the kiss. "You can keep kissing me then."
He grins and dips back down to do just that, but then her phone rings and kind of ruins the moment.
"Fuck," he says, pulling back while she goes digging for her phone.
"Hold that thought," she says, and then she sees the name on her screen and curses herself.
"What?" she says, answering the phone, and then Sean's dangerously deep voice floats down the line.
"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't turn you and your new boyfriend over to the Verrat."
Nick is already reaching for the phone, but Adalind shakes her head at him and steps back, concentrating everything she's got on the zauberbiest on the other end of the line.
"Because you hate bowing and scraping to your family just as much as the rest of us, and if you help us stay alive and out of the Verrat's way for the next nine months, you can have free reign in Portland without their interference for the rest of your life. Just think of it—no more Dad, no more Eric, no more Viktor, no more Kenneth. You know Kenneth? The really bitchy one? Even he won't bother you, if we do this right."
"Tempting," he says, voice like caramel and just as treacherous to her grinding teeth, "but unlikely. What makes you think you'll succeed where so many others have failed?"
Adalind takes a deep breath and looks at Nick. He's staring at her with his hands on his hips, clearly itching to snatch the phone away, and even without his powers, he looks deadly.
"Because we're killers, Sean," she says, "and we have an in with the Resistance and a plan to be Switzerland and oh, yeah, a magic freaking baby with superpowers, and if you cross us, we'll kill you and send your head to Vienna just to piss off Kenneth. Also, you hate the Verrat. They chased your mother out of Europe. You must want them out of town just as much as we do."
There's a beat, and Adalind can almost hear Sean rolling his eyes on the other end of the line.
"Fine," he says. "My office, one hour. Try not to start a war on your way here, please."
"No promises," she says, and then hangs up, grinning at Nick. "Well, that went well."
