I sense the first bricks of a wall being laid between us, and that’s something I absolutely can’t have. Slipping my arm around his waist, I step in front of him, my body intentionally pressed against his, as I look up into bright blue eyes that I’ve begun to see in my sleep. “I just don’t want you to get into trouble, or get hurt.”

“I’ll be fine.” He pushes my hair back from my face and smiles. So confident.

So very wrong.

“And what are you planning on doing, anyway, ‘Miss Figuring Out Life’?”

So he remembers that ambiguous answer. He really was listening to me that first day. “I’m not sure yet. It’s hard to know which path to take when you’re so young, when you have so much to experience.”

His stomach grumbles between us, making us both laugh and his cheeks turn just a touch pink. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him at all embarrassed. We step into a small, leafy alcove with a simple wooden bench and I hand Luke his sandwich. He has it unwrapped and in his mouth before I even sit down.

“You’re the fastest eater I’ve ever met in my life,” I muse.

“So, seriously . . .” He balls the foil up in his fist, his tone growing somber. “You’re not planning on going back to D.C., are you? I mean, I know you have your friends and family there, but . . .” His words trail off.

I’m a natural liar. I tell lies all day long. So why is it becoming harder to lie to Luke with each passing day that we spend together? I feel the urge to get up, to step farther away, as if that will somehow make this easier. I wander over to a nearby lattice structure. “I don’t know. Maybe one day.” I hesitate, knowing I shouldn’t make this harder on myself by asking. “Do you want me to stay?”

“Maybe.” Sincere eyes meet mine. “Honestly, I don’t really know what I’m doing with my life or how things are going to play out here. But I do know that, if I looked out my window tomorrow and knew that you didn’t live across from me anymore . . .” He clears his throat and ends with a soft, “I wouldn’t like it. At all.”

“I know what you mean.” I turn away from him so he can’t read the fear on my face. More and more, I catch myself trying to imagine a permanent life here. A real life. With Luke. It always ends with the same damning question: how could that ever work, with him being who he is and me being who I am?

It can’t.

That reality weighs more heavily on me, but I have to push my growing disappointment down and keep pretending for Luke’s benefit. For the success of the case.

“I do love Oregon.” My gaze wanders over the quiet, natural beauty surrounding us, which isn’t limited to just this garden. “Being near the river, and the ocean, and the rocky mountains, and all this nature . . . the weather.”

He chuckles. “I’ve never met anyone who actually loves rain. It’s kind of weird. But cool, too,” he adds quickly, as if afraid to offend me. “I just don’t get it.”

I shrug. “It’s not so much that I love rain. I just have a healthy respect for what it does. People hate it, but the world needs rain. It washes away dirt, dilutes the toxins in the air, feeds drought. It keeps everything around us alive.”

“Well, I have a healthy respect for what the sun does,” he counters with a smile.

“I’d rather have the sun after a good, hard rainfall.”

He just shakes his head at me but he’s smiling. “The good with the bad?”

“Isn’t that life?”

He frowns. “Why do I sense a metaphor behind that?”

“Maybe there is a metaphor behind that.” One I can’t very well explain to him without describing the kinds of things I see every day in my life. The underbelly of society—where twisted morals reign and predators lurk, preying on the lost, the broken, the weak, the innocent. Where a thirteen-year-old sells her body rather than live under the same roof as her abusive parents, where punks gang-rape a drunk girl and then post pictures of it all over the internet so the world can relive it with her. Where a junkie mom’s drug addiction is readily fed while her children sit back and watch.

Where a father is murdered because he made the mistake of wanting a van for his family.

In that world, it seems like it’s raining all the time. A cold, hard rain that seeps into clothes, chills bones, and makes people feel utterly wretched.

Many times, I see people on the worst day of their lives, when they feel like they’re drowning. I don’t enjoy seeing people suffer. I just know that if they make good choices, and accept the right help, they’ll come out of it all the stronger for it.

What I do enjoy comes after. Three months later, when I see that thirteen-year-old former prostitute pushing a mower across the front lawn of her foster home, a quiet smile on her face. Eight months later, when I see the girl who was raped walking home from school with a guy who wants nothing from her but to make her laugh. Two years later, when I see the junkie mom clean and sober and loading a shopping cart for the kids that the State finally gave back to her.

Those people have seen the sun again after the harshest rain, and they appreciate it so much more.

Luke has seen only the gold watches and fancy cars, luxurious apartments and beautiful women, promises of endless money and opportunities. But sooner or later, he is going to face the storm that comes from the choices he has made. It’s going to pummel him where he stands, drown him in regret, punish him for his ignorance and greed.