It made her heart ache. Had he felt anything for her?
“She’s been trying to make apple pie because it’s my favorite dessert,” Ty replied flatly. “I’ve had to eat five of the damn things in the last couple of weeks. They weren’t great, hence the need to try again.”
“We have a bake sale at Winter Festival. I’m not good at baking, but I wanted to make something someone would want to eat.” She wiped at her eyes. It was time to be away from him. It was time to take stock of what had happened and start to look at a way to move forward. Without Michael.
She’d thought she could heal him, but she wasn’t the right woman for him. Or maybe no person could truly heal another. Especially if they didn’t want to be healed.
He’d gone silent, his body tense again as though he was getting ready to go another round.
Weariness swamped her. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t wrestle with his past tonight. She had to pull away from him and protect herself. It was time to let him go.
“You have to know how this looks,” Michael insisted.
“I honestly don’t care. Good night, Michael.” She walked away and didn’t look back.
Chapter Fourteen
Ty squared off against Michael when he realized the other man might actually go after Lucy. “Absolutely not. You’ve done enough damage for one night.”
Kicking Michael out was the last thing he’d expected to do today. Even when he’d realized Lucy was going to be seen as a suspect, he’d been able to stay calm because he’d known Michael would take care of them. Michael would help them navigate this insane place they found themselves in. Michael would make things better, and they could laugh about it all someday.
He hadn’t thought for a second that Michael could become the enemy.
“It is not my intention to do damage, Ty.” Michael took a step back, and the threat of a physical fight deflated.
But there were other ways to fight. “Then what was your intention? Why bother waiting for us? You could have left.”
Michael ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I wanted to see if she was okay.”
“How the fuck can she be okay after what she’s been through? Watching that man die was bad enough, but now she’s facing down a real fight. She’s being accused of something unthinkable, and I would bet that wasn’t the worst part of her day. The worst part of her day was realizing that one of the men she loves thinks she’s capable of murder.”
“I think everyone is capable of it given the right circumstances,” Michael countered. “And there’s real evidence against her that she’s going to have to account for. She did fight with him. There’s a tape that shows her threatening him. She delivered the drink. And it doesn’t matter that she was using the apples to make pies. It still looks bad.”
He didn’t want to have this conversation, but he did need to make a few points. Michael, for all his law enforcement experience, wasn’t thinking this through. “Think about the timeline for two seconds. Do you believe she was cooking up cyanide just in case she might have to poison someone? Because the first time you caught her with a bunch of apples was the night I fucked up. It was the night we were supposed to have our first date, and it was also the night Brock tried to assault her. So she would have gotten the apples before he’d even tried something.”
Michael’s head dropped. “And then she basically moved in with us the next night.”
At least he could admit some truths. “Do you think she stayed up all that night and crushed up apple seeds to poison a man she’d already taken care of? She wasn’t alone, you know. Maybe River helped her. Jax has some interesting skills. He’s worked as a mercenary before. We should bring him in, too.”
Michael sighed, and his eyes were tired when he looked back up. “Damn it, Ty. It seems suspicious.”
“No. It doesn’t. Not to me.” This was where they definitely differed. “I could walk in and she could have been holding a knife and I would ask her what happened. I wouldn’t for a second think she’d done it.”
“I can’t be that guy.”
Yes, Ty finally had to accept that fact. He’d gotten so close to Michael, and he didn’t want to believe he was a lost cause, but he had to pick Lucy. She needed him. She needed to be surrounded by people who believed in her.
Nate believed in her. Gemma and Caleb did, too. Why couldn’t Michael see who she was?
“All right. You should go. I’ll take care of her.”
Michael hesitated. “You have to understand the position I’m in.”
“No.” He was resolute in this. “I don’t. You got hurt. I do get that, but I don’t understand what that has to do with Lucy.”
“And how am I supposed to know that? Am I supposed to trust this feeling I have about her? About you?”
It seemed simple to Ty. “Yes. You are. How do you live and find any kind of happiness if you can’t trust anyone? Are you going to break from every person who gets into the slightest amount of trouble?”
“It’s murder.” The words came out on a low growl. “It’s not like she’s been accused of shoplifting.”
“No one’s accusing her except you and the person who probably did it herself,” Ty shot back.
“You can’t know that.”
“I know it makes a hell of a lot more sense than suggesting Lucy did it. I would look at all three of them. I would take a big old look at Daddy’s will and find out where that money was going to go.” He’d thought about this the whole time they’d been sitting with Gemma. “Lucy gets nothing but trouble from this. And quite frankly, I’m offended you think she’s this dumb.”
“I never said she was dumb.”
“No, but you believe she would grind up a bunch of apple seeds to get cyanide and then take the damn drink to him herself.”
Michael had paled. “She lied to us.”
Ty rolled his eyes. “She’s explained that. She was trying to avoid confrontation. It’s a thing she’s done since she was a kid. You know you’re not the only one who has trouble trusting people. You act like you’re the only person in the world who ever got hurt. She grew up rough. She watched every mother figure she ever had walk away or die on her while her good for nothing dad sat in a lawn chair and drank his life away. I left her behind because I was too insecure to let her know how I felt. She struggles every day to feel like she’s worth something. It’s hard for her to trust you, too, but she did it and you bailed on her.”
He expected Michael to explode, to rage against him, but instead he sighed and his shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry. I told you I couldn’t love her.”
“Bullshit. You already love her. I think you’ve loved her for a long time.” He didn’t understand where Michael was coming from. “I know what happened with your fiancée fucked you up, but are you really going to let it screw over the rest of your life?”
Michael picked up his bag. “I don’t know. I would have told you I’m still angry, but honest to god, all I feel right now is tired. I’m tired of having this empty place inside me. The last couple of days, I didn’t feel it, but it’s there again. It never really went away.”