Page 72 of Long Hard Road

“I gotta admit, if I had a crazy ex in my life, she would be my first suspect if my girlfriend started receiving threats,” Ellison said.

“Even if your girlfriend is wildly famous and has tons of known stalkers?” Nate looked at Ellison with pure hostility.

Under almost any other circumstance, I would have melted at hearing Nate call me his girlfriend. I would’ve started picturing our wedding and future babies. But it was the last thing I wanted to hear now.

“I want to press charges,” I said, tapping the picture of the gorgeous redhead. “Do whatever you have to do, but now we know who she is and she needs to be locked up.”

“You got a problem with that?” Ellison asked Nate.

He shook his head. “No. Do you know where she’s been staying?”

“She has a room at a hotel outside of town. I’ll go to the police station when I leave here and have them make the arrest.”

“What about the kids? Did she bring them with her?” The crack in Nate’s voice was deep and his eyes flashed with concern.

“I’m not sure.” Ellison scooped up the pictures and slid them into the folder. “If they are with her when the police make the arrest, I’ll have the officers call you.”

“Thanks.”

Ellison caught my eye and nodded toward the door. I followed him reluctantly, not wanting to hear his lecture. “Thanks for getting to the bottom of this,” I said when he stopped at the door.

“Do you know what you’re doing with that guy?” he asked, putting a hand on my shoulder. “He seemed like a good guy, but this is a huge lie, Madi.”

“I know.” I couldn’t say more than that because I didn’t have an answer to his question. I had thought that I knew exactly what I was doing with Nate, but now everything had changed.

“Talk to him. Maybe it’s not what it seems like.” He gave my shoulder a squeeze and offered a kind smile. “And then call me if you need me to come back and kick his ass.”

“You’ll be my first call,” I promised.

Once Ellison was gone, I had to force myself to return to the kitchen to face Nate. I would’ve preferred to hide in my room for the next few days, but we had too many things that needed to be discussed.

“You were married,” I said, stopping right in front of him and looking hard into his eyes. “Long story?”

“Long, painful story.”

“Your marriage was over two years ago.” I knew that his secret marriage wasn’t the secret that had stung the most. It was those other two faces in the pictures. “That little boy is about two.”

“Yeah.” Nate rubbed the back of his neck while staring at the spot where that picture had been. “I want to tell you everything, Madison, but it’s going to be hard for me. I’ve never told anyone. My brother, Brent, is the only one who knows about Fiona and I never told him the full story.”

I went over to the cabinet next to the fridge and opened the door, grabbing the whiskey bottle inside. “How do you feel about a little Irish in your coffee?” I asked.

“I’m going to need more than a little.” He sounded so broken that I had to fight the urge to drop everything and hug him.

I grabbed a glass and poured an inch of whiskey into it. Nate’s eyes widened when I tossed it back in one swig and then poured another inch and handed it to him. “Seems like this might help.” Then I poured more whiskey into our coffee mugs and topped them off with hot coffee. “Let’s go into the living room so we can sit while we have this conversation.”

That seemed like a good suggestion until I saw the chaotic remains of our night together still on the floor. “I should probably throw those blankets in the washer,” I said, thinking about the way Nate had used one of them to clean me before bundling me under another blanket with our skin still slick with sweat. He had been so gentle and caring with every aspect of our night together.

“It can wait,” Nate said, gesturing to the sofa for me to sit. “Let’s talk. I really want to explain everything.”

He waited until I was seated and then made sure to leave a couple of feet between us before taking his own seat on the sofa. The coffee mug looked small cupped between his two large hands. Those same hands had cupped my breasts just a few hours ago.

“I joined the army right after college. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, I just knew I wasn’t ready to come back to the ranch.” He took a sip and continued. “The first four or five years were hectic. I was deployed a bunch and saw a lot of things that changed me. On my last tour in Iraq, I got injured. It wasn’t life-threatening, but it took me out of commission for a while. I tore pretty much everything in my shoulder and had a couple of surgeries to get it fixed. When I was in the hospital, I met a woman. She was my nurse.”

His nose scrunched the same way it had when he stared at that picture of Fiona. “I was in a bad headspace. The injury and PTSD were messing with me big time. I should’ve found a therapist but instead, I found Fiona. We went on a couple of dates and then she took me home one night.” He glanced at me. “To meet her daughter, Cassidy. She was barely one at the time and I fell hard for her. Fiona worked a lot of night shifts and I started staying over to watch Cassidy. Maybe that should’ve been a red flag. I’d known Fiona less than a month before she was leaving me alone with her kid. But I didn’t care. I wanted an escape from my shitty life and I thought Fiona and Cassidy could provide that.”

“We were together for a year and a half when Fiona told me she was pregnant. She was freaked, but I was excited. Our relationship wasn’t great, but I loved little Cassidy and I was so excited to have a baby of my own. I wanted to do things right for my family, so I asked Fiona to marry me. She said yes but she didn’t want to make a big deal of it. We just went to the courthouse and had a quick wedding there.”

My stomach churned at the thought of Nate married to another woman. Having a baby with someone who wasn’t me.

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